So Saturday dawned with a little more wind and the prospect of some reasonable sailing, not sure what the breeze was blowing, but it was fairly light maybe 7-8 knots max. Rigging second time round was a lot easier, although doing it in the limited space of the slip way was a pain.. Launching again seemed to be easier, grab toe-straps and boom and in to my neck… onshore wind and the way the shore slopes is a pain. But I got upright and sailing…
The balance–wire that is moth sailing is damned hard-work in light airs, some decent puffs came through enough for me to ride the wing properly and even in the really light breeze you could see her starting to plane nicely and the potential power… (also realised the toe-straps were far too short!)
I had a decent bit of time to start getting use to the controls etc then a a little increase in windspeed and I could feel the boat lifting, lifting, lifting <oh crap>, lifting until I must have been as high as feasible on my foils then… crash almost instantaneous drop back into the water… hmmm… tightened the elastic on the wand, a few mins later and the same again… up high and a scary crash back to the water… Grrrr.
Looked back at the rudder-foil setting and re-adjusted it to something that looked more reasonable…next gust and I got height and had a decent ride:
Man what a feeling…normal boat sounds, humming and then airborne silence, stability and euphoria!
Apparently my “whooops” could be heard from the shore… it was absolutely awesome!
The breeze remained fairly fickle and I figured it was best to give up for the day on a high! Coming back in was OK, but the trolley packing must have come off and putting the boat on the trolley at some point must have bent the outboard part of the pushrod (a-bloody-gain)…
So my to-do list is ever-bigger and includes, get a proper boat-cover sourcing a lighter weight trolley, straightening the pushrod and lengthening the toe-straps…
Apart from all that life is good!
Moth boat-bimbling FTW!
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