My first day racing at the Moth Worlds began with some embarrassing flailing and ended with a breakdown, but in between I had a great time foiling and racing and am feeling wonderful about the whole thing.
So about the flailing, here’s an overhead view of Fraglia Velo Malcesine, the club where the Worlds is hosted:
The arrow labelled “me” is where my boat lives, a nice little isolated spot. And yeah my neighbor there is Nathan Outteridge. Most of the boats are on the North side of the club, and use the North launch area, most of the rest are on the South side of the club and use the South launch area. But Nathan and I use the “ramp”.
So you see the arrow labelled “wind” at the bottom? Note the direction? Yeah. After launching on the ramp we have to “lowride” and tack back and forth between the jetty and the dock to get out. Not easy. I watched Nathan do it and he did it in fine style. But I struggled to get out and tacked back and forth about 20 times before one of the sailing instructors took pity on me and towed me out with a RIB. Yeah, it was an ignominious way to start.
The fleet of 142 boats is broken into two flights each day, yellow and blue. After the first two days of racing they’ll divide the fleet differently into a gold flight racing for the championship and a silver flight racing for fun. I was in the blue flight which meant starting later, and despite the flailing to get out *almost* made the first start.
I did make the second, and had a great / interesting time starting with 71 other Moths. Wow. I’ve been on some crowded / busy start lines before – including recently the J/70 Worlds (!) – but this was something else. Don’t even think about hanging out on the line and sheeting in at the gun, you have to time your start from a long way out. I optimized for 1) not being over and 2) not fouling anyone.
Once off the line everyone flies out to the left corner. In a Moth even a great tack is slow, so you make relatively few of them. The first boats coming out of the left cross the fleet and are gone. Everyone else sort of slots into a lane.
There are a couple of interesting things about Moth racing. First, some Moths are faster than others, but all Moths have fast and slow moments. The best sailors have the fewest slow moments, but even they are not going fast all the time. And the worst sailors have the fewest fast moments, but they do have some. Which means there is more churn than you would typically have in a big fleet, you have moments of brilliance where it seems you’re doing great even when others are having more of them.
Next, the big difference between fast and slow isn’t between straightline speed, it’s between sailing angles The fastest boats are able to foil while sailing higher upwind and while sailing lower downwind. So they win by sailing essentially a shorter course. If you’re not a great Mother – like me – then you spend a lot more time “reaching” for speed to keep foiling, and sail a longer course.
The day featured a nice breeze (enough to foil easily) but not a strong breeze (too much to control), perfect for me to get used to the boat. This was my third time in the water but my first day on which I could foil, and there were a bunch of little things to adjust. The whole wand control mechanism needed a bit of tuning, but i did get there in the end. (After a bit of swimming :))
Between the 2nd and 3rd race, feeling good about things and getting the boat dialed in, suddenly nothing worked. Yikes. I could not figure it out, but the boat would not foil cleanly and I could not control it. I ended up half-lowriding in to figure it out. And here’s what I found:
This is a closeup of the wand connection at the bowsprit, and as you can see there’s a teeny screw missing. Small but necessary, without the linkage the wand didn’t do its magic and I could not sail. I looked around for a teeny screw to replace it, and eventually settled for a piece of line:
Fingers crossed for today that this works…
Another challenge on the day was that the hiking straps “flapped” when I was at speed. They are tied pretty tight, and it will be hard to retie them, so I settled for adding a twist, held in place with a piece of bungee cord. This was more annoying than a necessary fix, but I’m hoping it works; stay tuned.
(When you’re foiling at around 20 in wind of around 10, you have an apparent wind of about 30 … so aero is important and stuff flapping around is not good.)
And in a nice piece of good fortune, Charlie, the head of the sailing school (and my wind sage) found me a new Moth cover. So the poor thing no longer has to live under a Wasp cover. I believe she is quite happy and ready for tomorrow.
As am I! Onward.
Mothing Malcesine 