scott.projectsomewhere

Big changes afoot for the 2007/08 18 Footer Season.

The 12 year partnership of John, Craig and Riss on the Rag is being broken up. Pete and myself are jumping on board in their place.

Craig’s coaching commitments for Singapore were going to mean lots of time away, so John had to start shopping around. Riss’ knee was blowing up at the JJ, so he was reluctantly going to hand the mantle on to someone younger.

Then Euan was not 100% on continuing into next season, so the choice was to either stick it out in semi-limbo waiting to see what happened, or take an offer on one of the other established top boats.

Tough decision really. But thankfully for some reason I’ve been spoilt for choice. Maybe it’s got something to do with having a web site to inflate my profile well in advance of my sailing ability.

So it’s going to be an interesting year. Hopefully not too many blow ups between the two brothers, and hopefully not too much yelling and screaming.

…

Preparation has already started for Pete and I, with the odd morning run with the beautiful people on Bondi. Pete invited Euan to train with us when he comes back… but the response was something like… “when I get ahead of you, you blokes might stab me in the back”. Too funny.

I’m slowly getting through the list of mods to make to my Bladerider. Slowly.

This weeks addition… PBO shrouds.

I’ve been trialling a prototype forestay for the last couple of weeks, and it’s worked well. So now it’s all go on producing a full set. Dog is ramping up production and provided they work well, i’ll bring a bunch of them with me to Garda.

Why do it? It’s going to save close to half a kilo in the rig. Not that much in absolute terms, but then the rig doesn’t weigh much either.

Then there’s the stretch. 2.5mm standard wire elongates to about 12mm at half breaking strain (200kgs), but the new PBO will stretch about 2mm for the same strain.

It’ll be interesting to see if I can notice the difference that makes to the boat. It’ll also be interesting to see what will give when the boat nosedives and the rig loads up.

Anyway, if anyone wants a set, give me a yell and I’ll see what I can do.

Bladerider have released a nice update on their progress through April.

Good reading. There should be even more news for May and June.

There seems to be plenty of movement in the Australian Moth fleet. I’m hoping it’s for the better.

Grant is selling his MKII Tiger (my previous-now-pimped boat), Donosan is selling his HT/Fastacraft conversion, Ben is selling his HT/Thorpe conversion… and even Les has mentioned it.

And I’ve already sold my Bladerider.

That’s an awful lot of new foilers on the scene if they all choose to upgrade. Luka said there were 7 new foilers being built for next season at St George - and I don’t think it includes any of the above.

Edit: Chris has also listed his 2000 World Championship winning boat…

Look at all that under-utilised wing and hull advertising space…

Nice clip from Rohan’s video of the last race of the Moth States on YouTube. It always makes you look good when you’re boat goes higher and faster than everyone else.