scott.projectsomewhere

So I might’ve been a bit blunt in yesterday’s evaulation of the 49er rig. I could probably have been more balanced in my post, but with everything on this blog, the opinions I post (not my commenters) are mine alone and hopefully they’re sometimes objective.

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.

It’s been a busy week on Hamilton Island, and since I’m bound by a confidentiality agreement of sorts, and short of blogging in cockney rhyming slang, I will be as vague as possible as to what went down.

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.

With just under a week to go, I’m all set for the Australian Sailing Development Squad camp on Bob’s Hamilton Island.

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?

There’s a nice 25 knot Southerly forecast for Saturday, so it might be time to put the new carbon Bladerider/Velocitek GPS bracket into testing and see what speeds we can get.

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

I just cannot believe it.

I can only begin to imagine what it feels like for Nath & Ben to come so close to Olympic gold.

I’m all tied up in knots about it… and I’m in Australia watching from the computer screen. Unbelievable.

What would’ve been the most spectacular medal race ever was passed over on channel 7 for rowing semi-finals. It is unbelievable how appalling the coverage has been in this country. So disappointing.

Crikey is running an interesting story today about the “cost” of each of the Australian Olympic gold medals.

How much support — financial, medical, coaching, training — would you need to reach the pinnacle of your profession? If you are an athlete in Australia, then about $40 million. That is a conservative estimate of what each Olympic gold medal in the last 20 years has cost Australian taxpayers.

I guess you can do almost anything with accounting these days. Even if we accept the premise that it has cost that much per gold medal, I’d say it has been worth it. If I was in control of the commonwealth purse strings I’d still spend more. Especially in sailing.

But then the talk of a HECS style scheme for AIS scholarships does make plenty of sense as well.

It sort of makes my lazy 40k Moth campaign a bit lame – but then I didn’t win either.