Well Day Four is the books – that’s Day Two of the Worlds – and I’m exhausted. I’m too tired to do much of anything, and most definitely should not be blogging. Calibrate accordingly.
It was windier today, and I found myself wishing the boat would just slow down so I could catch my breath. Unfortunately when it’s windy the boat has two speeds, zero and 20+. If you don’t pay attention while going one, you will find yourself going the other very quickly.
My exhaustion was compounded by another superdumb mistake. But before I tell you about that, I have to tell you about the beach and my solution for launching without flailing.
Here’s the aerial map from yesterday. But today instead of launching from the “ramp”, I rolled my boat down to the “beach”. This did three things: 1) closer to the exit and better angle to get started, 2) directly upwind of “me” (rolling a Moth around on its cart with the sail up, you can only go into or away from the wind, otherwise it will capsize) 3) less traffic from other boats. And indeed it worked, I was able to launch successfully. In fact I did it four times, more on this below.
Back to the superdumb move. So I spend the whole day sailing, working on the boat, sailing some more, swimming next to the boat, sailing. I am exhausted. I finally get in after the last race, carry the boat out of the water up onto the beach, and what do I see? My life jacket, lying on the beach.
Yep I sailed the whole day without a life jacket. Which is dumb for safety reasons, but also, when you wipe out as much as I do you spend a lot of time swimming, and it’s harder swimming around without a life jacket. Sigh.
Picking up another thread from yesterday, you will remember I lost a pin in the linkage to the wand, and tied a bit of line as a replacement. Well that didn’t work; I no sooner got out onto the lake and started foiling than it broke. No wand linkage, no foiling. So I had to come in to find something else, and after digging around a bit I settled on taping in a small hex wrench.
It worked! Unfortunately I didn’t check the control lines for the wand after fixing this, and when I got out on the water I discovered I needed to rerig everything including the wrench. Sigh. Back into the beach, work on the boat, back out onto the water. I am getting quite good at launching 🙂
What about the racing itself? Well quite honestly I didn’t see as much of it as I would have liked. I spent the day following everyone around the course. But I do have a few observations:
- There is a big rivalry between the various boat manufacturer camps. The Australian Mach 2 is the historical incumbent, they pretty much invented the off-the-shelf foiling Moth, and continue to be a leader. Nathan Outteridge has a Mach 2. More recently the English Exocet seemed like it was winning everything. And even more recently, the top guys are sailing the New Zealand Bieker.
- The race committee announced they would only run races in the range 8 to 25 knots. Well that’s a big range, and Garda is a big lake, so at any given moment any part of it can have any wind speed. There were times today that I thought we were below 8, and a few times I thought we were above 25 (probably just exaggerating).
- There is a bell-shaped distribution of speed in the fleets. At the front, a few boats pull well away and have significant spacing. In the middle there’s a big pack with lots of infighting. And at the back, a few stragglers struggling to stay in contact. Including me …
- As I mentioned yesterday after the start everyone punches the left corner. It easiest since you’re on starboard tack, and also the left side (East Coast) seemed to have the most wind. Today the committee setup the course so that the first tacks happened right off the yacht club. As a spectator it was fun to watch, and as a racer fun to have a bunch of spectators yelling encouragement. You don’t often get that in sailing 🙂
It turns out that the past two days have been qualifying for the Gold and Silver fleets, but the scores won’t count toward the final placings. I didn’t know that. So be it, I’m back to zero!
Just as I was leaving the club, exhausted, I looked up and there was this magic sunset. It put a big smile on my face which is still there now 🙂 … onward!
Mothing Malcesine 