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?
Monday, September 22, 2008
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
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.
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:
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
New rudder and foil:
With removable horizontal:
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
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Olympic Moth?
During this first week of Olympic Frenzy (at least in the media and at sports other than sailing) Scott has blogged a long and considered post regarding the nomination by Hong Kong (where there are no moths racing) of the moth as one of the single handed classes for the London 2012 Olympics. Of course the worlds loungeroom internet experts have been advocating an Olympic Moth for a couple of years but this time the nomination is apparently real.
The comments and discussion following his post shows some diversified thinking within the existing class and my contribution will be seen as negative to those who think an Olympic Moth would be progress.
The way I see it Olympic selection would be good in these aspects:
a. Olympic sailing might actually get on television instead of gymnastics, swimming or synchronised drowning.
b. Some small number of highly slilled sailors (some existing mothies, but mostly existing olympic aspirants) will get full time funding to raise their standards even higher.
c. Some builders will get heaps of orders from government subsidised organisations who are willing to pay above the market price of present moth sailors for something which is marketted to them as slightly better than the rest
d. There will at least initially be more moths sailing.
e. Some people might actually consider a sport exciting enough to take up after watching it on TV. (I included this one because other people believe it but I do not)
Against this I see these negative points with respect to the moth class:
1. The influx of new numbers and the pressure from IOC/ISAF/Govt funding/full time sailors will all change the culture and direction of the class.
2. Events will need to be of higher standard than our present amateur run affairs, requireing professional PROs and better venues than we enjoy using in Aust and I suspect in other moth racing countries. (The countries with fleets not the ones with a few individuals)
3. I forsee pressure to change rules in areas like, a lower wind limit to make all racing on foils, one design to cut development costs.
4. If the IMCA members are reluctant to go with these changes a one design split will happen, just as it did before, the Europe in the 60s and less successful ODs in other countries.
5. An ultimate reduction in numbers because as the full timers and their backers raise the standards, the part timers and amateurs will loose interest and drop out. This happens in Aust will all classes selected for the olympics, even the laser numbers are propped up by the masters circuit, not olympic aspirants.
6. In a while the numbers lost will exceed those gained.
7. A one design moth will still only have a limited life before either
. sailing gets dropped from the games because it is too expensive to run with limited TV money returns, or
. something newer and flashier comes along to replace it, or
. the troglodites revive themselves and vote the Finn back in.
8. So the next step is the moth class ends up loosing the olympic full timers and the amateurs and vanished into a puff of ego.
9. And I doubt any of the TV lounge lizards will last long in a moth.
Think about it?
Do the IMCA members really want to be lead on by the armchair internet sailors, a blinded media or an ambitious few mothies at the risk of killing the classs?
My vested interest is that I like designing and building my own boats, I am not interested in one design, nor in buying other peoples products, (even if I do at times buy components).
I think also that the class has come such a long way in the past 75 years and really has lead the way in so many aspects of sailboat design. It would be a real shame if this move were to curtail that development when there is so much further to go.
The comments and discussion following his post shows some diversified thinking within the existing class and my contribution will be seen as negative to those who think an Olympic Moth would be progress.
The way I see it Olympic selection would be good in these aspects:
a. Olympic sailing might actually get on television instead of gymnastics, swimming or synchronised drowning.
b. Some small number of highly slilled sailors (some existing mothies, but mostly existing olympic aspirants) will get full time funding to raise their standards even higher.
c. Some builders will get heaps of orders from government subsidised organisations who are willing to pay above the market price of present moth sailors for something which is marketted to them as slightly better than the rest
d. There will at least initially be more moths sailing.
e. Some people might actually consider a sport exciting enough to take up after watching it on TV. (I included this one because other people believe it but I do not)
Against this I see these negative points with respect to the moth class:
1. The influx of new numbers and the pressure from IOC/ISAF/Govt funding/full time sailors will all change the culture and direction of the class.
2. Events will need to be of higher standard than our present amateur run affairs, requireing professional PROs and better venues than we enjoy using in Aust and I suspect in other moth racing countries. (The countries with fleets not the ones with a few individuals)
3. I forsee pressure to change rules in areas like, a lower wind limit to make all racing on foils, one design to cut development costs.
4. If the IMCA members are reluctant to go with these changes a one design split will happen, just as it did before, the Europe in the 60s and less successful ODs in other countries.
5. An ultimate reduction in numbers because as the full timers and their backers raise the standards, the part timers and amateurs will loose interest and drop out. This happens in Aust will all classes selected for the olympics, even the laser numbers are propped up by the masters circuit, not olympic aspirants.
6. In a while the numbers lost will exceed those gained.
7. A one design moth will still only have a limited life before either
. sailing gets dropped from the games because it is too expensive to run with limited TV money returns, or
. something newer and flashier comes along to replace it, or
. the troglodites revive themselves and vote the Finn back in.
8. So the next step is the moth class ends up loosing the olympic full timers and the amateurs and vanished into a puff of ego.
9. And I doubt any of the TV lounge lizards will last long in a moth.
Think about it?
Do the IMCA members really want to be lead on by the armchair internet sailors, a blinded media or an ambitious few mothies at the risk of killing the classs?
My vested interest is that I like designing and building my own boats, I am not interested in one design, nor in buying other peoples products, (even if I do at times buy components).
I think also that the class has come such a long way in the past 75 years and really has lead the way in so many aspects of sailboat design. It would be a real shame if this move were to curtail that development when there is so much further to go.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Sidetracked
I have spent most of the last month working on my big boat. Sorry about the lead poisoning of a Moth blog but long years of poor maintenance meant that a big job was needed.
Breakfast is 31 years old and I designed and built her initially as a 1/4 tonner but it has been subsequently altered to better suit its main purpose as a fun day sailor or weekend camper on the Harbour.
It has been completely repaintd and all rigging replaced. There might be some twilight racing coming up for the old girl next summer.
It has been completely repaintd and all rigging replaced. There might be some twilight racing coming up for the old girl next summer.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Winter Project
The Tiger is dismantled at home and some upgrades are happenning.
The wand and pushrods are being replaced with lighter stuff and the conduit through the foredeck is being replaced with a carbon tube which better aligns with everything for significantly less friction.
The flex skin flap hinge has to go, as it has become very stiff as the resin has aged, a shame but it was worth the experiment. Might try it again someday with more research into suitable resins.
Planning a better fit for the fin case cassette which makes up the space between the old 200mm wide centreboard shape and the 120mm wide foil strut size. Similar treatment needed on the rudder box and gudgeon fittings.
After sailing Dave's boat briefly its easy to see how importat all this is and how slack I have been with tidying up the mechanism and set up generally.
Once all that is finished a new better set of foils is on the menu.
The wand and pushrods are being replaced with lighter stuff and the conduit through the foredeck is being replaced with a carbon tube which better aligns with everything for significantly less friction.
The flex skin flap hinge has to go, as it has become very stiff as the resin has aged, a shame but it was worth the experiment. Might try it again someday with more research into suitable resins.
Planning a better fit for the fin case cassette which makes up the space between the old 200mm wide centreboard shape and the 120mm wide foil strut size. Similar treatment needed on the rudder box and gudgeon fittings.
After sailing Dave's boat briefly its easy to see how importat all this is and how slack I have been with tidying up the mechanism and set up generally.
Once all that is finished a new better set of foils is on the menu.
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