Monday, September 22, 2008

A good weekend.

Saturday at St George was a nice relief. After some dispute with the club managment we settled our differences and an initial 12 moth sailors registered with the club to sail the season. Another 3 or 4 were unable to make the day but will be there in the next few weeks. Some of the admin people who have had gripes about mothies were absent and we had a good chat with the club president and the new race officer who are with us in building the class.
After that we went sailing in a gusty NW and big run out tide. Dave Lister is still decidedly fastest, at least until Luka gets his new prowler. Meanwhile Luka is our finisher/recorder.
A short course w/l and 5 laps. I am not sure anyone did the whole lot as there was a bit of stopping and adjusting settings. It did not matter as the pointscore starts next week.

Sunday I went to Woollahra for the around the Harbour marathon. Only one other moth turned up, Marty, so I am not sure what has happenned to their building Moth fleet? Marty and I are second division moths so we were not going to stay with the 49ers and 18, but we beat everything else and had a great sail in a 10-15kt NE and beautiful sunshine.

These two days sailing were very rewarding. For maybe the first time in 4 years the control system was working properly and I felt comfortable driving the boat fast without concern about launching and crashing. So the winter work on the system and all the help from the other mothies has been well worth it. This is why islolated mothies have so much difficulty getting the system sorted for reliable height control, and why those boffins working on more complex boats are up against the wall and may never get it going well. The Moth network is invaluable.

Another week in the shed coming up. Last week I helped laminate some new foils for Mark Wolney's new Gilmore boat. His materials, my slow mold but in his budget. Now they are done I am back to my toys. I have bought the damaged Ilett foil from Scott and repair is underay. I hope to have it under the Tiger next weekend and look forward to a boost in performance.

Meanwhile I have started work on the damaged Hungry Tiger hull which was once Steve Donovan's Karma Package Deal. I have removed the flairs and 100mm of freeboard including the damaged sections plus the big fin case and have left a hull shell, foredeck and aft deck panel, all beautifully built by Thorpey and weighing only 5kg. I will add one or two kg in fincase, wing mounts and assembly but its still going to be a very light hull. Progress will be slow until I sell the Canoe to fund the carbon tubes. This will become the 2009 version of the continuing Chainsaw, minimum moth experiment. 20kg target? ambitious! No photos of this project to date.

On anther story all together St George skiff sailor Bruce Gaunt has been experimenting for a few years on a 16ft long moth like monster. 12 sqM sail on a big rotating mast, 3m wide wings and all very light. Now he has foils for it, and it has flown, by all accounts with some success. While I voice opinion against big boat foiling experiments around the world, Bruce has succeeded due to his concentration on weight saving and because he is in the circle of knowledge in the St George Moth foiling fleet. He has the systems working.
I am still not sure why he did it, must have cost heaps more than if he had just built it as a moth. It will be interesting when he lines up against the moths, will it be any faster?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

New Season underway

A beautiful day to start the new season. 28 deg C and a good northerly.
There were 8 foiling moths out testing at St George. Plus two more owners there to assess and prepare their boats. No race yet but a good show of enthusiasm.

No serious problems from anyone. A couple of broken wands and I had some issues withmy new pushrod system which will fix OK during the week.

A good day all round

Friday, September 5, 2008

New moths, a boom?

The two year Bladerider boom has had anamazing impact on the Moth class. Suddenly people arre seeing moths as a growth industry with profits to be made?
Simon Payne has anounced a new production moth in association with AMAC and McConnaghy.
This must mean AMAC has disposed of his Bladerider interests and must also have something to do with why Bladerider has left McConnachy's.
Although Bladerider has made about 200 boats its not really clear to me that they are yet profitable. Its because of all the expensive Australians in Melbourne and flitting around the world, who must be soaking up a lot of the revenue. Add to that the first year when they seemed to need to replace about half the output due to failures. And now they are moving factories and starting up new product lines which must all be costing a motza. And I wonder if they will still be buying KA sails from AMAC?
And now the Mach 2 (Payne/AMAC) moth is going to start the whole process off again, more tooling, more development and associated failures and rework, more money invested and hopefully a whole lot of new moth buyers.
Meanwhile John Ilett has moved his hull production offshore and will concentrate his small workshop on foil production and boat assembly.
And Velociraptor in UK are promising some improvements after the WC exposure to potential customers.
I just hope that the total production capacity does not exceed the market volume.
In the past 5 years two other successful moth builder have decided their business time is better spent on other classes. Both Thorpey and Full Force decided that the continuous development of the moth was not worth chasing. The both had some serious money invested in molds which now sit idle, not goood for business.
While more builders and more boats is great for the class, there must be a finite limit to the number of people who have the $20K to spend on a toy which many will not even be able to sail first go.
Businesses going broke and upsetting customers would be very bad for the class, so I hope no one gets burnt.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Coming out of hibernation

The winter refit is complete:
New rudder and foil: With removable horizontal:


New hinge and gap closure on main foil:
All with new gloss two pack finish, flash!
New wand and pushrod system :
Also in the yard is Andrew's remodelling of 9332 with new gantry and foils:
Racing starts in a week or two.

4 moth clubs in Sydney now with Woollahra joining St George, Balmoral and Northbridge/Seaforth, all with viable fleets