Another interesting weekend of testing and tooling around on the Moth.
John and I took delivery of our new CST Composites High Modulus rigs on Saturday morning. We only had 1 set of cam spacers between us, and I had plenty of other boat work to complete, so John put his together. It was perfect to have one known configuration and one new setup to test the differences.
But in true Moth fashion, we decided to change a lot of other variables at the same time.
I’d replaced my twice-broken pushrods with 2.5mm stainless, and that had made my boat nauseatingly responsive. The added stiffness of the new pushrod and the new control cable meant that I was bouncing my way along. It was safe in big chop, but surely couldn’t be fast to be flapping away underwater. I’m still amazed with the performance changes that small modifications to the rate of change in the bell cranks has… let alone taking out flex in the rods.
John also put his new special, thin, foam-cored, hollow-backed centreboard in, but after a couple of hundred metres went in to change it for the old one. Another couple of laps around and another broken pushrod later, the new one was back on. The fitting tool (rubber mallet) would’ve been getting a workout.
So after all that, was the new mast faster?
Who knows.
John did manage to foil a bit longer in the marginal breeze, which hadn’t happened before. On Sunday morning with the same configuration he was a touch faster through the water but I still managed to win the majority of our 10 or more races.
So this week the masts go for bend testing… then more testing in two weeks time. Given how fast (like stupidly fast) Dave Lister is with his CST mast, there is definitely promise there.
Being on the water that early on a clear Autumn morning was definitely cold. Almost UK cold. My rudder decided it wanted to ventilate more often than normal, despite sort-of solving that problem a couple of weeks back. Luckily I could stay toasty and dry with my Zhik Superwarm gear. I think a beanie and some warm gloves are the go for the next few weeks.
What else can I spruik in this post?
New wands, bellcranks and wand fittings this week. More sails arriving soon. New shrouds in a fortnight. New wing floaties. New wing covers. The guys in my office are amazed with the amount of stuff that I comes through the post for me… and more than once I’ve received stuff that I’d forgotten I’d ordered. It’s almost like getting surprise christmas presents every day… except that I’ve paid for them.
I’m going to pass out when I work out what this little jaunt is costing, even though I’m not technically a privateer. F#$k me it’s beyond ridiculous.
But to top the weekend off I worked out how to pull off foiling tacks. Given the amount of blather about it on the interweb I thought I’d better try to get it working… and given that some think I’m one of the contenders for this regatta, I’d better know how to fack.
