scott.projectsomewhere

A bit of a delay in the return to regular programming with a wet wetsuit in my fibreglass box causing the quarantine of my boat. I won’t do that again.

Hopefully it clears this week and I can get back onto the water again.

In the meantime, the boat has been sold and a new one is on the way. Another Mach2 for our club. Plenty of interest in boats, with a bit of new blood wanting to join in the fun.

There’s also been plenty of interest in replicating the slalom event concept that Rohan pushed in Geelong, and the class held again at the Gorge. There’s a similar event penciled in for the Nationals in Perth, and 3 different groups pitching to run an event in Sydney later in the year. If even one of them comes off it could be awesome for the class and the sport… If we can get some nice media coverage. Hopefully.

Anyway. Cock of the Harbour marathon race this weekend will see a few Moths pitted against some 49ers, i14s and maybe 18s. No idea what the record is, but if the conditions are right we should give it a nudge.

A week or so at home and I’m back into the rhythm of work. Great.

No sailing unfortunately as my boat is still AWOL, so there’s been plenty of time to debrief, get things underway for 2011, talk through some sponsorship ideas and work out what needs to be done to go faster. So still plenty on.

And just to top off the fact that I don’t have a boat, it’s been 25+ degrees and windy enough. It’s still technically winter though, but the sailing season can’t be far away.

The 18s are ramping back up again for their October season start. The San Fran regatta kicks off soon enough, and a couple of teams have been out training on the harbour already.

Marcus and his new team on CST apparently broke a rig and lost their #1 mainsail on the tow home. So they’re having a typical introduction to 18s.

And the 7 program has been back at it, with a couple of morning training sessions trying to get their pocket luff mainsail working. Having worked out their last season rig was slower than the one before, it looks like they’re after a boat speed edge to put them back on top. Shame their cone of silence has more leaks than a watering can and everyone already knows they’re struggling to work out their cams.

Let the games begin.

So that’s it. All done.

Bora took the Worlds in impressive style. He sailed his Mach2 faster than everyone else, with a speed edge downwind that gained him places every race. Apart from a few early mistakes, he sailed well and took the championship easily. The first American in a very very long time.

I ended up 7th, taking Brad Funk in a couple of close races on the last day. Not exactly happy about the end result, but carrying a DNF, I was never going to trouble the top bunch. There’s still plenty of time to debrief on where things didn’t go so well, but equipment failure is sitting there as a big area for improvement next time.

Funny that for the last year I sailed a reliable but relatively slow boat, now I’ve got a fast but unreliable one. I’ll have to find fast and reliable next time. I spent plenty of time and money trying to get that sorted in Sydney before I arrived, but the mast and wingbar failures were pretty unpredictable. What can you do?

Anyway, even without the failures I still wouldn’t have troubled the placegetters. The top guys were just too good this time.

Next stop is Dubai, the Worlds there next March promises to be an awesome event. Both Dubai and Belmont have got a lot to live up to given how successful Cascade Locks has been.

Final day for the Moth Worlds tomorrow.

Today was a better day than yesterday, though that’s not too hard.

The boat stayed in 1 piece, so that was a win in my book.

It started out pretty poorly though. I struggled around and then dropped the main at the top mark and dipped a wing, then stuffed the first gybe on the z course to let another bunch through. Then I started to work through the boats and ended up crossing the line in 9th behind Rohan. Not so great.

The next race was better. Arnaud launched again and took a good lead. I battled it out, rounding the top mark in 2nd I think before Simon mowed me down downwind. I hung in there upwind, but Dalton went through and Bora was right behind for the run to the finish (never a good spot to have him). But for probably the first time in the regatta I held my own downwind, and even passed Dalton. But only just. We were smoking into the finish line, me on port, and Bora and Dalton on starboard. I crossed just ahead of Bora, and just behind Dalton with all of us traveling at over 20 knots. Then I crossed the line a couple of seconds ahead. So a 3rd place.

The next race was more of the same, everyone was getting tired through. Nathan fell out of the boat in a tack near the top mark, and I snuck around close behind in 2nd. I took some distance out of him downwind, but blew out the bottom mark rounding and let him through again. Even though they say it’s Bora in this video trailing Nathan up the shore, it was actually me. Anyway, I went closer to shore and then put plenty of distance on Nathan going higher and faster. Bora crossed ahead then behind upwind, but I stuffed the last tack and struggled to foil again in a lull across the spacer mark. Bora came through underneath and by the time I was back up to speed he’d put 200m on me. Damn.

But again I put distance on Nathan downwind and took 2nd place.

So a 9, 3, 2 for the day puts me up only 1 place, into 8th, tied with Rob and 1 point behind Brad.

Rohan is 26 points ahead, so the best chance for tomorrow is 7th. Two races to go so we’ll just see what happens.

My last blog title might have been too prescient.

Today I went for a couple of risks. I’d switched to a straight wand to test yesterday, but given I had to repair the forestay fitting I didn’t get a chance to test it. So I went all out and ran with the M351 mast and low gearing on the wand.

The gearing didn’t work so well, but when I wound it out it all went fine.

Fine is one way to put it.

I blasted out of the blocks, and was just destroying people for pace upwind. I took a few shifts and led around the top mark by a good margin. The soft mast was so easy when the breeze was up.

I stuffed the laylines at the bottom and had to double gybe, before doing a lame rounding. Bora was eating up the distance. A couple of lame tacks upwind and he almost crossed, before I got my shit together and opened up another nice margin by the top of the course.

I held him off downwind to score a close win. Nice to have one of those on the scorecard.

But then it all goes pear shaped.

I was sitting in the boat slowly heading upwind, and when I pulled away to go back to the startline, I pitchpoled, and in the pitchpole the front wing bar and compression strut tore in half. I heard the crack when I hit the water, and knew it was going to be nasty. In the process the mast foot blew out of the base of the mast, and then the top of the boom got crushed as it flailed around underwater.

So from 1st, to nothing.

There was no chance of getting it sorted for the 3rd race, so I had to cop 2 more DNSs, along with the one from the first day. There goes my regatta.

I’m now in 9th spot. Game over.

I have managed to find parts from the spare Mach2, so the boat is back in action for tomorrow. Fingers crossed nothing else blows up.

Now I’m down to only 1 mast, and John’s boom I brought as a spare. 5 races lost in the 2 events is a bit much, and along with the work done in Sydney makes the whole experience a bit more than character building.

As John often says, it’s a c%^t of a sport at times.

I dodged a bullet today I think.

I pulled the rig up to go for a quick blast on the lay day to check a few things, only to notice one of the forestay forks in the bow had sheared. If I had have sailed, I might’ve dropped the rig. Not a good look.

Thankfully Amac had a fix for me, he pulled the broken bit out with his fingernails, then bent a new stainless half-fork and tapped it into the hull. Total fix time about 20 minutes.

I’m hoping it goes the distance, but then I’m still paranoid about breaking stuff.