scott.projectsomewhere

The new Fastacraft Prowler is coming along well… all painted and shiny. Can’t be far away from hitting the water now.

Hopefully I can get it all sorted and going fast for the NSW States at Easter.

I would guess Australia Day for the average punter means a day in the sun, on or around the harbour watching all boats and flags. Lots of national pride and beer and stuff…. with a few million fellow Aussies…

For the 18’s, it means another dreaded race on the harbour with obscene amounts of traffic, the consolation being that if you come off the water without breaking the boat, you’ve had a good day.

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On that note, Noakes and F&P didn’t have a good day. In a port-stbd t-bone, Noakes came off 2nd best, with a hole through their port topside, through the internal frames and out the deck with F&P blowing up their pole and wires. Nice work….

And Rollo doesn’t get back for a few weeks yet…

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We raced a windward-leeward course between Garden Island and Shark Island, given that racing the usual easterly course into Kirribilli would’ve been impossible. To aid the whole visually spectacular aura of the 18’s, the startline was set 200m to leeward of a warship conveniently anchored at 90 degrees to the wind. To cross it’s bow you needed to start at the boat end and pinch, otherwise you needed to tack within the first 100m before the wind shadow. Great work.

We started well, but couldn’t lay and were the last to tack to take 7’s stern, they were the only boat to cross without a tack, and got into the outgoing tide first to take the lead.

We bounced around off the shifts, ferries, tallships and spectators to go down the fleet, then up, then down over the next couple of laps. On the last work, we hooked into the struggling nor-easter, and gained minutes on the front-runners as we reached into the mark at full stick.

Unfortunately, on the run down to the warship finish, we took the well worn route around the front of it, along with the rest of the fleet from 3rd to 15th, all in a nice little bunch. Unfortunately we didn’t come off well, finishing pretty much at the back of that pack.

At one point we were on starboard gybe heading past the stern of the ship to go around to leeward and we tossed up continuing on… but decided to gybe and run the normal route… if only… Smeg went around behind us, and charged through 3-stringing to the finish to claim 4th. Nice work.

Anyway, after that we’d handed our series 2nd place to Fiat, with the rest close behind.

Sunday looked more promising, with a nice building seabreeze.

We started well, a bit too well apparently, with fellow Ullman’s Asko and Smeg being recalled. After our restart, we sailed fast and played catchup to claim 7th, 1 second behind Active Air. In the OCS race we won over Asko and Smeg, so that’s ok.

With a 10 and 7 score, we’re down to 4th or so for the regatta. The spooners on 7 have romped away from the fleet with some great sailing, taking the series (like the States before Christmas) with a race to spare. Not even a collison and capsize with a historical 18 on the last gybe could stop them claiming 5th place and the National trophy. Another very solid performance and something to think about for everyone else with only a few weeks to go before the JJ…

In the true spirit of this echo-chamber-blogosphere, I have to congratulate former Moth World Champion Simon Payne on his discovery of t’internet and entry into the high-stakes world of Moth blogging.

Desperate for news of my new boat, Simon’s blog is the first - and best place to look.

For the rest of the internet Moth sailors, it’s another refreshing example of the mindset of our fellow - unique - Mothists.

If only the new 49er carbon rigs were around on Friday night…

I went out for a quick sail with Dave on his 49er in what was left of the gusty south-easterly, and we just put the kite up, did a gybe and were talking about how lame it was to be using an alloy rig in 2008, when next gybe, bang, we hit the piss and peel the Athens games mast off the boat.

Beautiful. An expensive 20 minutes on the water.

I caught the Point Piper YA mark as we drifted downwind, and tied up there as we tried to sort out the rubble. Thankfully we were in Sydney Harbour, and not Port Philip or San Fran in a run-out-tide. By the time we’d got everything together, the water police had arrived and gave us a tow back to the sailing club.

Welcome back to 49er sailing.

Things develop quickly in the world of Mothing…

Garda training partner and fellow former team Bladerider member, John Harris has changed tack, and gone back to team Bladerider.

The situation for him was to maybe have a new boat ready for end-April, or have a new boat delivered next week. I guess a couple of extra months on the water would make a bigger performance difference come Weymouth in July - given John’s short Mothing career.

Oh well. We won’t have a great two-boat tuning program like we did in the lead up to the last Worlds, but at least John and Simon will be able to test their tweaks and techniques for their Sydney Bladeriders… side by side.

As for me, I’ll have to buy some skirts to hide the new boat and it’s secrets from prying eyes… and find a remote location to test pilot the latest ideas.

You can be sure that it’ll be full radio silence on the blogging front if things aren’t going well…

I’ve had a couple of people ring me in the last week wanting me to put some time into crewing on a 49er in the lead-up to the Europeans in March. Some people must think I know how to sail or something given the artificially-blog-inflated-profile I seem to have.

It’s pretty late in the game to be stepping onto a boat with any expectations of doing well… considering it’s an Olympic year and all. That and I haven’t got the build to do it brilliantly (I’m going to attempt to go sub-70kg for Weymouth).

And that thing called work gets in the way as well. And the upcoming JJ takes me out til the end of Feb. And a new Moth on the way by the end of Jan.

It’d be nice to train up with Nath, Ben and Emmett, but where am I supposed to fit it in exactly? And how am I going to pay for it?