Moth Fest 2011 Wash Up

Well I have done a lot of sailing over the last week.  The weather was not kind to us and we lost two days but Saturday's regatta day made up for that. Burning blue skies and a F3 - 4 made for some great racing between the 5 nations represented at Moth Fest. Memorable moments for me were completing two gybes in succession in sub 10 knots and chop to take 3 boats.

Gear wise the only failures were related to my wonderful Phil adjustable wand. The paddle on the wand is a work of art but is not quite strong enough as a number of us broke them off in normal sailing use. Fortunately my homemade paddle came to the rescue as a replacement. Simon Maguire's comment was that there was more epoxy than carbon in my paddle but it is very strong. Simon also wrapped tape around my bulhorn fitting to permanently attach the wand to the wand axle to strengthen it. More about Simon in a mo.

What have I learnt from Moth Fest? One of the joys of the place is that you can safely launch and almost immediately be presented with a challenging chop where you can learn how to go fast in waves. Number one thing was using combinations of adjustable wand, ride height and rudder adjustment to get the boat to track without porpoising. And, of course, "send it!!". Gybing improved after I learnt to ignore the waves, focus on keeping the boat flat and performing smooth Payne like turns.

Mike Lennon gave an interesting talk on sail tuning. The highlight was him demonstrating his maximum raked back setting using the multitude of controls that he has on his boat. On the water it looked like a windsurfer. But he is fast and was consistently the fastest all week.

Mention must be made of Simon Maguire of Maguire Boats. He is a boat builder based in Lymington and saved the sailing bacon of several of the British Moth Fleet during the week with some high quality repairs to get them on the water next day. His thoughtful and pedantic approach to his new Moth will produce a quality boat soon to take on any out there. Take a look at his website http://www.maguireboats.com/.

The boats will be back in this country tonight. I packed the tramps away with all of the control lines still spliced so it will take some careful unraveling to see if I can put it all back together without having to get the fid out. It will hopefully save mucho time.