scott.projectsomewhere

Not that the new boat needs a birthday anyway…

But that was my weekend. 24 odd hours working on the new 18.

The new Rag is shiny white. It looks great, but not quite as striking as the Cooper’s green of the last boat.

Progress was a bit slow at first, with a bit of a stocktake needed on what bits we didn’t have to do the fitout, then a fair amount of measuring and leveling to try and find the centerline and make sure the mast step and jib track weren’t out of whack. But since everything on these boats is well out of alignment, it should hardly matter.

Munster said we didn’t do too badly on the tools for a bunch of pen pushers. I think that was a compliment.

Now we’ve got a couple of weekends to get everything sorted before the season starts on October 12th. And John is leaving this week for a couple of weeks, so there’s going to be a bit on getting it all together.

What I would do for a fully cocked workshop, close to home and with a full-time staff about now…

There seems to be no shortage of enthusiasm for the 18′ League this year. Saturday’s cold August weather wasn’t enough to stop about 7 18 footers rigging in the park for a practice session.

That’s despite 5 or 6 of the best boats in the fleet being overseas competing in the San Fran regatta.

I wonder what that’s all about? There could either be a bunch of boats who are immaculately prepaired for racing come the season start in October and/or there could be a bunch of very tired, burnt out crews by the JJ in February.

Time will tell.

Meanwhile we’re scheduled to start the fitout of our new boat in September. With 7’s new boat to be finished soon after. The 7 boys have saved their new Southern rigs from a thrashing in San Fran’s breeze… yet they’re still winning with their old generation rig. It’s going to take more than a few training sessions to take them down.

The boat that will revolutionize the 18′ skiff fleet and save the World has been launched in Switzerland.

Or at least it’s been test sailed (not exactly in foiling form).

And there’s even photos…

The Moth has provided a nice diversion to the usual weekend 18′ skiff racing over summer. But the 18′ scene doesn’t stand still when the boats aren’t racing. There’s been plenty of jockeying for position with crews, new boats and boat allocations in the last few weeks.

Rumour has it that the Rag team will be the only one of the top 5 or so to stay together for season ‘08. It’s pretty surprising to go from the new combination last year, to the relatively old hands next time around. Big changes are afoot for Asko, Fiat & Smeg - all losing their skippers. With Macquarie and others losing long-standing crews…

At least it will give the new teams from last year a chance to step up and give the former top boats a run.

And contrary to the chicken little’s on sailinganarchy, the sky isn’t falling and the 18s aren’t going to disappear. But thanks for the concern.

I said the same thing after last year’s JJ performance from Fiat.

This year, the bar has been raised. A lot.

Last time around, Fiat won with a race to spare and 15 odd points on the scorecard. This time 7 dominated, taking it with a race to spare and only 9 points. Even after getting home at 9.30 AM from the night-before’s celebrations and sailing practically blind drunk, the 7 team almost won the final race.

There’s been a hell of a lot of talk about professionalism, money, coaches, training etc etc. But you can’t take anything away from the guys. They’ve sailed incredibly well. Like I said yesterday, few people can remember such a dominating performance - especially considering the strength of the fleet.

The attention to detail in the 7 program was phenomenal. From having separate foil bags to stop their foils being scratched as the boat was carried into the water, to drilling out the centre of the cap-shroud bolt at the topmast to save weight, to spending big dollars to re-fair their foils, there has been nothing missed, no stone left unturned.

They’ve used their coach and mentor to great effect. They’ve used the defending champions on Fiat (and to some extent Macquarie) to develop rigs, then cut them loose when they’d put themselves far enough ahead. They’ve formed training race groups with boats that wouldn’t threaten them. They’ve been ruthless.

The 7 boys have sailed together as a team for close to 9 years, but have raised the bar yet again in only their second year together on the 18. Their sailing was exceptional. At no time were they out of the top 5 around any mark in any race. Their acceleration off the startline and their speed build out of tacks was unbelievable. Their sets, gybes and drops were just a whole magnitude better than anyone else.

They truly do deserve to be the JJ Champions for 2008.

Even discounting their extraordinary support, the spooners are way out in front. And deserve to be so.

But where does that leave everyone else?

There’s the general funk that disappointment leaves for the rest of the fleet, leading to a lot of soul-searching, a lot of reflection. After fighting it out at the top of the pack for 7 seasons, Hugh, Paul and Niall on Asko are pulling the pin. They’ve always been there. They’ve been teasingly close. It will be sad to see the fleet without the Asko crew. They’re good solid competitors and just nice guys.

For us on the Rag it has been an up and down year. We’ve finally won some races, which put a good spin on the end of an otherwise ordinary JJ. We beat Beasho on Club Marine by a couple of points in the end to claim 5th spot. But at that point it’s all academic. Like Linksy said afterwards, it’s first or it’s nothing. Unless I get eased by John I will be around for another shot, maybe in a new Rag for ‘09. Pete might be back on the front, despite being stalked by others already. Good people are hard to find.

The guys on Fiat are reassessing where things are at, on a lot of levels. Cocko will be working things out, and there’s talk of Nath spending more time with his young family. They’ve said they’ll be happy just Sunday sailing, but I can’t see that being enough for them when it comes to the crunch.

On Macquarie, Jack and Drew are talking about time out. Micah wants to roll in for another year.

Kinder Caring is going from strength to strength, and will surely be back together.

Then there’s the rock stars like Nathan Outteridge who are seriously talking about putting teams together, perfect for the low-year in their Olympic cycle.

The League is sending a bunch of containers overseas this year. There’s 8 boats going to the Anzac regatta in NZ. There’s also plenty of people talking seriously about San Fran and Bandol.

There’s also a murmur around the park of the JJ being held overseas in future years. That’ll sort-of ruin our season and make it tough to campaign all year. It’s been verbally agreed to, but I can see plenty of unhappy campers in the boat park complaining about that. It is our trophy after all.

A couple of races to go and then it’s curtains for season number 4 at the Leage.

Next up… the new Moth.

I’ll hold that maxim as true at this point… after taking out race 6 of the JJ on the Rag.

At least it adds a bit of an upside onto an otherwise generally disappointing regatta.

We started ok this time, boxed in by Beasho on Club Marine, we reached out on the pin end for clear air while a bunch of boats went back to restart. Up the work we were looking great, a knock later we were in about 4th, where we turned and headed back for the first of 4 downwind legs.

Beasho and Seve tangled at the bottom gate and we gybed out to take the lead. We lost the lead again, then gained, then lost, then gained. Finally we put a bit of time into the spooners and sort-of managed them and minimized risk to stay between them and the finish and score a 16 second win.

Phew.

But that was it for the regatta. 7’s silver spooners have taken it out in pretty emphatic fashion. Nobody seems able to recall such a dominating performance.

Whether they can stand up in time for today’s final heat remains to be seen, but it doesn’t really matter. Even the bookie had taken them out of the field after about heat 2.