I shouldn’t have been keeping track of it… but I did.
The Moth campaign from Feb-Aug this year cost $27551.09, which doesn’t include sponsorship valued at approx $11322.18.
Ouch. And that’s before the return shipping is paid.
Then I’ve started the planning to compete in 5 World Championships in the next 12 months. That’s not going to be particularly cheap either!
Another year, another Brass Monkey regatta at SFS… and probably another 0-knot drifter.
The last few years have been… interesting… and for me - completely unsuccessful. Maybe this year will be different.
Given the boats should be leaving the UK this week (we live in hope). I might even have something to sail by the end of the month. If the weather is good, I might just join in this time around.
Anyone else going to race?
It looks as though the Woollahra Sailing Club fleet of Moths is going to be steadily growing through the approaching season.
The fleet, which has been made up of John, Matt and myself will be adding a couple of new Bladerider owners to it’s ranks shortly, and with scheduled regular racing on Saturday’s the fleet can only continue to grow.
And who could argue against it?
We’ve got plenty of grass rigging area. We don’t need to swim and drag the boats over sand or rocks to launch. We’ve got plenty of storage space. We’ve got nice flat water in Rose Bay and nice choppy water in the Harbour. We don’t have to battle tide or sandbars. We can launch and have fair sailing in pretty much any direction of breeze. We can set full size courses. We can run and score multiple races a day. We’ve got a bid in to run the States next Easter.
And arguably we have the fastest fleet in the World.
It all sounds too easy doesn’t it.
Back in 2006 I ran a couple of demo days on my HT foiler which all went pretty well.
Probably too well actually, seeing as it got John hooked and now he’s beaten me. Oh well.
Anyway, I’m thinking of doing it again. With the growing class in Sydney, plenty of manufacturers and a bunch of good second-hand boats available, it’s a perfect time to pull in a few new recruits.
I’m thinking of running it in late August or September and I’ve got about 60-odd people to email and drag along. I’m sure (and I hope) they won’t all come, but you never know your luck in the big city.
So if you’re interested in test sailing a Moth, or letting someone else test sail your boat, or you have a boat you want to sell, then it’s probably worth coming along. Send me an email and I’ll keep you in the loop.
– UPDATE –
Rohan is bringing the Bladerider FX to Woollahra this weekend for a press and limited sailor demo. It looks like it will stick around in Sydney for similar demos over the next few weeks.
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John Ilett sent me this photo to explain why I was having trouble with control downwind…
Might help if I had my eyes open.
The analysis of the Worlds has kicked off with a good article from Toby on thedailysail.com
This is the second year in a row they have turned up to the World Championships more prepared than the rest of the world. In particular they seem to place a much higher value on using training partners and groups than many other nations and this has shown in their results. Adam May commented to TheDailySail that: “The Brits just are not spending the time sailing together at the moment. Looking back at last year Rohan [Veal] and Amac [Andrew MacDougal] both spent a lot of time training together and this year John Harris and Scott [Babbage] did the same.” It is pretty easy to see this is the case with Harris winning the Worlds, Babbage taking fifth and Amac in second, having been the leader after the first day. By way of contrast two sailors who were predicted to be very fast, but who had both run very individual campaigns were Simon Payne and American Bora Gulari. They ended up in eighth and 20th respectively.
Great to see the media coverage of the event… with even a live-blog of the racing and the 4 hour + AGM on Wednesday! Toby must’ve been as bored as I was the day before when I blogged the manufacturer update.
