Friday 4th July - The Moth Worlds

After briefly attending work I got a taxi to the airport and flew back to Heathrow where I was meet by two drivers who had been sent to pick me up. As nice as that was it was a bit pointless as there was only one of me. One of the drivers went home and the other drove me to Weymouth which with some bad traffic and rain and detours took almost 3 hours (it’s not for me to ask how much that cost the company). Once arrived and a quick look around the boat park I grabbed a lift with Amac to Portland where Doink had given me some basic directions of where we were staying. They didn’t need to be elaborate, it was easy to find the place, except that we were in the wrong lane, and Amac couldn’t see out of the car except for a small portion of the windscreen due to all the sails and foils that he had in the car (I only just fit, in the back). Amac was happy to leave me with my sail so he could see a little better to get home.

Saturday was spent sticking numbers on the sail, getting it measured, and looking at all the things on the boat that I didn’t like (of which there were quite a few) but not being either able or willing to change. Some things I couldn’t change as it wasn’t my boat, others I decided would be bad to change before sailing the boat. The practice race was cancelled due to too much wind.

Sunday and Monday were both spent sitting in the sailing club doing nothing as the wind did not abate. After the racing was abandoned on Sunday Doink and I went up and had a look around the Portland Bill, until it started raining (typical of the English weather). There were some really cool cliffs which would be good for climbing and were fun to just go for a little bit of exploring. It was blowing a gale there straight off the sea and it almost felt like you could lean right forward into the wind at times.

They let us out on Tuesday evening for a speed challenge put on by a GPS manufacturer (Velocitek). This should have been my test sail of the boat, but unfortunately, after getting upright & moving, and sailing about 15m the fitting attaching the shrouds to the mast failed causing the rig to fall down, luckily it didn’t damage the brand new sail (much). Unfortunately for me this was a bit of the boat that I’d looked at that I didn’t like, and I should have trusted my gut and changed it (somehow) The fitting was re-made on Wednesday while we all sat around at the club doing nothing (and enduring the 4 hour long AGM). Some took the opportunity on Tuesday evening to enjoy themselves before the Lay Day (that wasn't as it was already used). I Can only say that I did not post a fast time for whilst tackling a Tiller of Cider.

Thursday finally saw some racing. First real sail of the boat was the first race in about 15-20 knots. I had a poor start and managed to claw back some positions throughout the race (mainly downwind surprisingly). I lost a whole bunch back when I had a big cartwheel just before the finish. I think I still managed to beat the guy who's boat I'd chartered. The second race I had a much better start and was going ok until the top mark. I had a bad tack and lost a couple of spots, then as I bore away to go downwind I got too high and crashed which broke the connection from the wand to the main foil (another part of the boat I didn’t like the look of). I sailed back in to repair but it failed again when I went back out. A final attempt got it to work without breaking (for 5 minutes) but it was out of adjustment and sailing too high which was a bit scary in what was now consistently 20+ knots. Given I’d already missed the 3rd race and was unlikely to be able to adjust it and make it to the start of the third (and it only seemed to be getting windier, I called it quits for the day.

So after one day’s racing I had three drops and it was unlikely we would get more than one. I was not alone in hoping that it is lighter on Friday. But I didn’t keep my hopes up

Friday it blew again. But not as much that they were going to not let us have a series. I’m not sure that it was less than 18knots during the first two races. I made it around the course, I had good speed upwind with the setup changes, but the boat was very hard to keep in the water downwind so any places I gained going upwind were lost going back down. It was easier to sail low and slower but unfortunately the courses sailed were triangles and sausages, which meant I only got one downwind leg that was manageable each race, and finished on a very difficult and fast broad reach which if in a good boat and allot of confidence you could hold 20knots boat speed for the whole leg. They broke for lunch and unfortunately that broke the boat, when we lifted the boat from the water the wand caught on the cradle and fell of the boat. I didn’t bother to look at it until I’d eaten some lunch as I was one of the last boats back ashore. Preparing to go back out I decided it wasn’t worth risking having the wand fall off on the water and with no easy way to re-attach it (another poor design in my opinion). Instead I missed the last race, which apparently abated a bit and was only 15knots at times, I used the time to start drying my sailing gear and removed the British numbers from the sail so that when I return home I can affix the Leprechauns 9337 underneath the AUS (as it rightfully should have done in the first place).