So now comes the 29er Worlds, then the Moths. Anyone taking odds on a hat-trick?

Go the mighty sailingbits compass bracket!

Yes indeed.

I’ve never really been one for clever titles. Hence the one about shiny carbon parts. Keep it simple.

We have been busy putting together a whole bunch of new carbon components.

A new 49er compass bracket is available which fits neatly onto the new carbon 49er rig. Nathan & Iain and Euan & Sam will be using them in the Delta Lloyd Regatta this week.

Then there’s the modification to the popular Moth GPS bracket to fit the foiled bars on the Mach2, and the geometry of the Prowler wing frame.

And then there’s the new lightweight adjustable carbon spreaders for the Moth. They’re well priced and give you something else to adjust, or even just a way to pimp out your boat with more clear-carbon goodness.

But wait, there’s more…

Next up is the new deck compass bracket for the Mach2 and Bladerider, and our new carbon cams which minimise the chance of the cams falling off the newer small diameter masts. They’ll likely go on sale soon but might be in limited supply for the Worlds.

Then there’s the gucci carbon trapeze handles…

We trialled our new big rig for the first time last Friday, and it is enourmous. We were flat wiring and depowering well before we would have with the old #1. Hopefully that is faster. We need a couple of sick easterlies to find out.

Sunday’s race was an all #2 rig affair, with a seabreeze coming in faily early and a hot day forecast. The breeze came in, but not at 25 knots, so all in all it was an easy welcome back after the break.

We started well with Euan on Souther Cross just below us, Seve buried and tacking out early, and the Project guys launching off the line with speed down low.

The Poms have been working pretty hard on their sailing and their gear since they arrived back in October, and it shows. They lead from the first cross and didn’t lose it til right at the end of the last work.

Upwind we made a couple of mistakes and lost a few boatlengths on the leaders, but rounded in 4th behind Project, SX and 7. Down the run we rolled 7 twice, but Pete decided to throw himself over the side at the bottom mark. 7 went through us and we lost touch with the leaders. It was all still faily close with SX finally getting the upper hand on the last upwind, before Project did a huge pitchpole in the big waves off Nielsen Park.

We banked a 3rd for the first race of the Nationals. Not bad, but still points we don’t want to be losing.

Photo: Ace Marine Photography
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The Moth preparation for the Nationals has been coming along well. It feels like everyone has made a bit of a step up since SIRS.

John, Marty, Ben and myself trained in a nice Southerly last Thursday, with my changes proving themselves against John early on in the session before he found his legs.

In Saturday’s 6 or 7 races in a moderate East-Nor-Easter, John won a few, I won a bunch, and there were a whole load of very close finishes – one in which Marty and me crossed at the same time, and another when John almost cleaned up my rudder blasting into the line on port. Les seems to be 10%-ifying every time he hits the water, so in short order he should be well ahead. The last week also sees both Tacka and Nathan training with us to find the way around the boat prior to their first regatta.

Only a few days left to go now.

The 49er class association is holding a two day 49er event at Woollahra this week-end to promote the class. This is a good opportunity to encourage some new people to get involved in 49ers.

The plan is as follows:

10am – 4pm on Saturday – meet at the club, talk by Nathan about sailing a 49er including the new rig, opportunity to go on the water and sail the old & new rigs in some short racing, and then a talk by YA on getting to the Olympics.

Sunday: 10am – lunchtime – opportunity to sail a 49er
And then in the afternooon, Club Racing (its a Club Championship week-end)

So……….if you want to try the new rig, have a sail with someone really good or just generally support the class, please come down to Woollahra this week-end.

It’s a good chance to have a look at the new rig and have a go on one.

And we might just have the FX there to demo in case we can steal borrow another couple of 49er skippers at the same time

Anyway, by all means the new rig is very nice. Southern have done an incredible job in the manufacture and finish. It is light and stiff and looks beautiful.

But out of the box it wasn’t as quick as old rigs, which in themselves weren’t quick against other high-end old rigs.

The new rig was quick when the breeze went soft, and the crews on the old rigs needed to bend and over-compensate for their heavy/soft masts. The new one could hold power longer and quickly gained in those lulls.

When the crews could stretch out, the old rigs were a touch quicker.

In 20+ knots, who knows.

I think the new rig will get faster and faster as teams work out how to tune in properly. We rapidly improved it over a few days with more and more primary tension and less and less D1s. The mast also seemed to bend quite a lot at the gooseneck with only moderate tension and no main or vang, which probably pointed to a setup problem in the heel. Taking up the bend so low probably meant the bend wasn’t going higher up the rig enough. Again more tuning would sort that.

So while these opinions are mine, I wasn’t alone in holding them. Several extremely technical and extremely talented sailors also voiced the same concerns.

Where to from here?

I would look at the mainsail, not the mast. That’s where the easy gains can be made.

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Also worth keeping an eye on would be the flatter top spreader angles for the straighter mast, which puts the spreader tips closer to the spinnaker leech. We lost 1 spinnaker there through course of the week.

In terms of how it was for me? Interesting. A bit tough being the 3rd wheel in terms of 49er teams, but Fang and I held our own at times. We were off the pace in the couple of line ups we did, til we swapped roles and I crewed. That’s either a worrying sign for my helming abilities (considering Fang had never steered a 49er), or I’m a shit-hot sheethand that could make a beginner look good. Or maybe we were still slow.

Anyway, the on-water stuff was great til I came down with Pete’s flu and slowed up on anything remotely physical towards the end of the week.

In terms of everything else? I got a lot out of the testing and analysis we did off the water. I was fat and gutless compared to the standard in most of the measures, though I still fared pretty well against most of the other 49er teams. In terms of previous injuries and physiological red-flags I came out well, probably due to a life of sitting in an office typing away on the computer.

So after a week of living the Olympic dream, did I drink the kool-aid and set my sights on Olympic glory?

No. I’m just too old and cynical for that. Or maybe analytical if my profiling was accurate.

As I see it, there’s a lot of pros for jumping on board. The campaign is a great lifestyle. Doing what you love every day would be pretty satisfying, and living the life-less-ordinary would be pretty sweet. I’d like to think I could get to the standard with enough time and money, but given my age, and that I missed the lucky gene-pool club, I have neither. Yes, plenty of people have made it before without the cash, but unfortunately I need to put time into working to afford the equipment, training and campaign costs associated with getting to the level. That working time is time that’s not spent training. Catch-22. I could probably make some big sacrifices if there was a high probability of success, but given that someone like Nathan is standing between the challengers and the goal, the probabilities of success are fairly low. That’s a pretty defeatist attitude from the start. Nathan could’ve thought the same thing when looking at Nicho post 2004, but didn’t.

It could be done, but it would be a big mountain to climb. And I can’t see anyone around who has the right mindset and the numbers to make it add up. With the new rig coming along, the likelihood of my height & weight being suitable for being the best crew is going down. I could change the weight to a certain extent, but height is not something I can deal with right now.

And there is an huge amount of really awesome sailing to do in the meantime. Sailing which makes 49ers look just plain… plain.

So that’s basically what I said in the management session. I love my sailing, and I’d love to do it, but the sums don’t add up. I won’t be doing the saildownunder series in a 49er, or the 49er Nationals or the 49er Worlds or a European campaign. But by all means I’d love to stay in the loop and return to Hammo or wherever if I can help in some way.

But if there was an Olympic Moth on the other hand…

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The most interesting find of the week was probably the performance of the new carbon rig in the 49er. There’s no polite way to put it unfortunately. It was slow. The new rig was smacked in every line up and every race by the not-fast conventional rigs. Against an Olympic-standard rig in an Olympic-standard hull, the new rig would’ve been out the back door. Even with Nathan steering, the new rig could only just hold a lead in the short course racing, due in no small part to the skill of the helm.

With a bunch of tuning, the rig did get faster through the week, but it still wasn’t fast. The amount of vang needed to get the leech to stand up properly means the booms are going to blow up quickly, and the grunt required to get it on in the first place would be tough, even for a roid-muncher like Fang. To get the mast to bend enough, the rig will have to be wound up very tight, which means the already relatively soft hulls are going to be wearing out quicker than ever. It might’ve turned the corner from replacing a mast after every couple of events, to keeping the mast and replacing the hull every couple of events.

If the mainsail shapes aren’t tuned up, I reckon it would be faster to sand the mast down to remove some of the carbon, then re-spraying clear coat to make it look the same. Totally illegal I know, but unless they’re going to use calipers on the sections during measurement, then totally possible, and probably faster.

By all means, I could be totally off the mark in my evaluation. I mean, who am I to judge these things. There’s more testing to be done for sure, but there could be a few unhappy campers when the new rigs come into effect.

The 49er group is up first, sharing the first week with the Laser Radial girls, the RSXs and the 470 boys along with a full compliment of coaches. Along with our Olympic rep Nathan, we’ve notionally got 4 49er teams attending. 3 established teams from NSW, VIC and WA, and myself and Jasper Warren, who don’t seem to be fitting into a campaign as such. But if I’m teamed up with Fang, I might have to step back into steering one rather than being on the front. Shouldn’t be too hard.

There’s also a full program of stuff going on during the week we’re there including individual fitness evaluations from the AIS, physio sessions, psychology, technical stuff. Plenty on. So much for laying by the pool in the sun.

There’s definitely been an awful lot of planning and preparation put into this, the logistics of getting everyone there, scheduled, fed and accomodated is in itself already pretty awesome. It’s great to see Yachting Australia putting in the effort to expand the Olympic program again at the low point in the cycle.

I fully expect to be sworn to secrecy with a whole ream of confidentiality agreements once we’re there, so the blog might be on hiatus… for a week. To fully appreciate it, I will also be suspending disbelief for the week and will do my best to keep my cynicism undercover.

But then I could just keep blogging the details. It’s not like anyone involved actually reads this right?

I’ve got a way to go to improve on my 22 knot 10 second average from Weymouth.