scott.projectsomewhere

With summer approaching I had the chance to head out for my first twilight training session in the Moth yesterday. After about 45 minutes of drills I lined up against the old 90′ Shockwave/Rambler/Whatever that was doing the CYC twilight race, and using the same mark I was rounding.

And while speed comparisons are always lame, it was fun to just blast away from them upwind even though they were pointing 15 degrees higher. I waited for them at their top mark, then pulled away and left them behind on the downwind. Sure they’ll have a higher top speed when they actually get the thing wound up, but in 12 knots and only a foot of chop my little boat is more than competitive.

Nice.

For the Moths at SIRS this year.

In terms of numbers, we’re still only at 6 7 13 17, but early entries don’t close til the 26th. Even at those numbers we still put our poor Olympic cousins to shame.

Despite an effective boycott from our mates at St George, the class is going to field a strong fleet. We should have good competition throughout the performance range, with the current World Champion, the current US National Champion, the odd Olympic medallist and a bunch of local, interstate and overseas boats committing to it. It’s a shame some, even apparently the fastest Moth in Sydney, are missing the opportunity to finally put to bed the belief that Moths don’t have a strong racing fleet.

Oh well.

I’m looking forward to having the Moths dominate the sailing press with some awesome photographs of the fleet with Sydney as the backdrop. Front page of thedailysail.com anyone?

But there’s a me.

Or a John. As the case may be.

The rapidly diminishing value of the Australian dollar is slowly starting to have an effect on prices for all our imported gear.

Which is a shame really. For example, we are seeing Velociteks fly out the door at an increasing rate, but we’ve just found that they’ll be bumping the price for Australians by about $200, or close to 40%. I think that’s going to dampen sales potential just a bit. These prices will kick in from November 1. So get in quick if you are thinking about one.

The same goes for guys like Bladerider and the Mach2, with Bladerider taking a hit in their AUD sales margin for now with only between a 0-5% price increase yesterday, and the Mach2 approaching 30k delivered locally with taxes.

Sure I can deal with collapsing stocks, declining real estate values, nationalized banks, government bailouts, recessions and rising unemployment… but try to up the price on my toys… and I’m pissed.

Bruce & Luka have launched their mothcast.net site with a riveting first podcast show featuring… me.

Not bad if I do say so myself. I didn’t sound too much like a tool, and even managed to avoid saying anything incriminating.

The October Long Weekend has been and gone, with not much to show for it.

There was no 1-Lap-Dash around Lake Macquarie thanks to my new-fangled two-piece foils, which ended up being not so bad, with most of the day being sub 5 knot wind and rain.

We tried to race at Woollahra for the first race of the season, to no avail. Only a few boats made it down, and by the time we’d set up the course, the wind had left as well. I sailed John’s Bladerider with my AppliancesOnline rig and managed to have a comfortable edge upwind over Dave in the 15-20 knot rain squall that came through. Downwind Dave was noticeably faster as I weaved my way around the biggest waves to make sure I didn’t break anything.

I managed to bend another pushrod, but by recent standards that was a win.

Sunday rolled around to another dull and light wind day. This time Nathan brought Nicho’s boat down for a bit of a run, and we had 3 Bladeriders on the water for a couple of hours while the breeze cooperated. Nath nailed the foil gybes within only an hour or so of sailing, but I could still gack better than him to stay ahead while the wind faded. But only just.

Monday arrived, with more rain and less wind. Some time after lunch, Pete had recovered enough to drive the 18 to the park and we managed a bit of boatwork. We’re still a long way from being ready for next Sunday, so the rest of the week is going to be a write-off in an effort to get the thing sorted. The new Delami was out on the water on Monday, and the new spooners are all set apart from the wing tramps (which were Seve’s responsibility apparently). At least we’re ahead of Herman, who’s new boat is only being painted this week.

Roll on next weekend…