I write this with my legs and arms still feeling the effect of two days solid Mothing over the weekend. Whilst I adore the fact that the Moth is a development class and the enhanced performance that every major change brings, there is nothing that can replace the fact that if you can hike out harder for longer, and play that main sheet enough, you will have the God-given speed that everyone craves, no matter what design you own or how much you spend.
For me, in order to reach any standard of fitness I have explored two avenues: one is buying a hiking bench from these guys http://www.hikingbench.com/. I chose the classic hiking bench with a narrow seat and, with the aid of a tape measure, replicated my sitting out stance exactly. I do 150 hiking sit outs a night whilst watching the TV. Its not boring like a gym and I feel good afterwards. The other avenue is trying to sail harder than I did before. This means in practice doing a quarter mile beat on one tack without giving in and then flipping over and doing the same distance on the other tack and then working hard down wind instead of treating it as a rest.
Whilst this all sounds great, my tacking throws a lot of my straight line speed away. Anyone who can tell me one thing that helped them tack better, please add a comment to this blog.
We are now getting good turn outs for Saturday and Sunday racing at Hayling Island SC. Gradually we are getting Race Officers to set Moth friendly courses in our own fleet. However, we still have a large number of Mach2s that hardly ever move. How anyone can spend £12k on a boat then not use it is beyond me! We also have what I call the night shift turn up in the shape of Geoff Carveth (current SB3 World Champ) who goes out just as the harbour lights come on. Bizarre.
It is still pretty mild in England and it gets pretty sweaty inside the old steamer. However, today is a lot colder, and I imagine it will not be long before I am shaking snow off the boat cover. I will sail as long as the temperature remains above freezing. Using that rule, it is amazing how few days you actually lose at Hayling, mainly because we sail on the relatively warm sea. And, let me tell you, absolutely nothing beats the under floor heating in the changing rooms after a cold sail!
