Aching to Fly!

So as I write this I ache, mentally a little and physically.

Sailing the Moth is awesome, I still haven’t got to grips with the beast yet, but each time I sail I get more confidence, more in tune and more flight-time.

Mentally its a challenge, the balance, the tuning of the rig, foils and physical position and movements… Rigging is now pretty much sorted, although I am still struggling with getting the mast up, not sure whether I’m doing something wrong, or lacking some upper body strength or just ‘cus I’m a short-arse?

I had some really decent foiling runs yesterday, the breeze was probably just sub-10knots the gusts may have been a little more, but not much… I loved the fact that at one point I was foiling but knelt on the centreline! Not sure how many foiling runs I had, but I managed a lot more variation in points of sailing and lots more course changing when up on the foils.

Strangely, and I think I may need external help on this, most of the foiling runs ended, at some point either because of the wind dropping, or more confusingly for no apparent reason… what tended to happen was either:

• Loss of control and a broach with the windward wing smacking the water….and capsize
• Foiling nicely and then a relatively slow heel to windward and then a sudden nose-dive, and a lurching to windward heel and capsize

Still in both the scenarios I didn’t need to worry about tacking… bloody boat did that for me as I was “ejected”! But why.. what is causing the end to the beauty of my foiling run?

• Weed?
• Issues on the surface of the foils?
• Body position?
• …or just the way it happens….(surely not?)

Anyway, the new aluminium trolley worked well I(thanks dad), nothing broke, reputation in tact…. just a shame no-one had a camera to snap my exploits!

I love the moth, I haven’t given it enough time, not enough time on the water, but I hope that Autumn and Winter will give me that time and I can saill in stronger winds and foil more consistently.

Sailing the moth is an awesome buzz, its a challenge on so many levels with associated grin-factor!

Day 3 – Successes & what I didn’t do…

So I managed to get the moth out on Sunday, yay, kind of a “Father’s Day treat” outing for me!

The sun was shining, but the breeze was a fluctuating shifty 6-12 knots I would guess, but I’d seen Colin Newman out around lunchtime, foiling a lot but also flopping around as well in the lulls…

I got the boat rigged, spent a little more time looking at the rig and trying to set that up correctly…

Launched, without any issues! So that was a great improvement from last time to just be able to carry the boat into the water and get the thing going.

Wen sailing… the wind had, outside of the odd gust dropped significantly from earlier unfortunately… I did however manage to get a decent few foiling runs done (no photo evidence this time) and was up for a decent amount of time allowing me to start to get to grips with feeling the boat, balance, helm etc and be in control… there wasn’t enough breeze for me to manage to foil upwind properly, but it was nearly there. Also in the really light-‘n-shite stuff I did manage to carry on sailing the boat with a decent level of balance and control so again very promising.

In the “gusts” the boat was feeling well powered up, but they were short and sharp so it was difficult to tweak the rig and body weight to really work out how the thing should be sailed.

Weirdly on port tack I couldn’t get her to foil properly..up, up, up and then a very violent “periscopes up” crash landing… I tweaked the rudder angle and the wand tension a little, but didn’t seem to rectify the issue… we shall have to see what happens in more stable breeze hopefully soon.. So these disturbing “splash-downs” eventually caught me out and as I grew more confident I seemed to capsize more! Still, the technique for getting the boat back up and sailing again quickly seems to be nearly there so I’m happy about that.

So not much to report..

• I didn't break anything
• I didn't get frustrated launching or recovering from the capsizes
• I did have a decent couple of foiling runs
• I did struggle with tacking
• I did enjoy myself
• I do want to go back out there
• I did get knackered
• I am still aching!

Absolutely Trolley’d

So I seem to be doing more boat bimbling than sailing recently (in conjunction with my Dad, Mick Clay who can’t help but help, thankfully!)…

I found soon after getting the new Moth that the launching trolley was quite heavy in comparison to the hull weight and that proved to make launching a moth in its traditional way (on the side & carried through the lapping waves!) a bit of a challenge…

I enquired around a bit for the cost of a new light-weight trolley and was quoted anything from around £250 to £350 for a few lumps of aluminium!

So I’ve (well mostly my dad) managed to legally obtain enough aluminium to be welded together to form a decent, very strong & lightweight frame… and over the course (hopefully) of the next few days we will be transferring the cradles onto the new frame and away we go..

Circa £55 for a great, lightweight, custom made, aluminium launching trolley. Bargain & Job done!

The cover, custom made by Pinnel & Bax  is ready too (Thanks Stevie Graham) so that will be picked up very soon too…

Pics of Cover & Trolley soon.

Now time to go off and dream about sailing “my life-balance investment”.