All of Long Beach seems to have decided it's Christmas, and that recovering from seasonal parties is the order of the day on Sunday. So not too many people were out enjoying the 8-10 knot breeze that piped up out of the west today. Hell, there may even have been a few twelves in there. Anyway it was enough to have to pull on some cunningham to depower while foiling. Not sure exactly how much water time I logged - something over an hour but probably no more than two. Funny how we put so much effort into the sport for so little time actually doing it. But then most sports are that way I suppose.
Linked up with Bobby K and Alex on the beach, who were in recovery mode but looking very relaxed. Took time getting rigged and fielded the usual assortment of questions. Ran into Chad from North Sails - 49er sailor friend of Zack Maxam's from San Diego. Seems keen to find out more about Mothing so will have to get him out on the Prowler some time soon. Was not able to coordinate sailing with Charlie and Zack as I was on call and did not know what time I would be able to leave work, so impossible to set anything up especially with the iffy forecast of 10-12. But checked forecast when leaving and I'm learning that if any wind is forecast by NWS for Long Beach then it is generally enough to foil in the afternoon, which is pretty nice as there is almost always SOME wind forecast.
Which reinforces my notion yet again that a Moth is a brilliant water toy. These things allow you to play extreme apparent wind games in so little wind that anything less would not be enjoyable in any other boat either, which is pretty obvious when I am the only small boat on the water in all of Long Beach Harbor. Is there any other boat that makes light air sailing this much fun? If so, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't even seen the A-cat guys out practicing much lately, but they are probably enjoying a break from sailing after the runup to their Worlds in November.
Working on fairing some foil tools, then mounting and assembling the materials for a layup. May try infusion as my parts will have a 90 degree bend in the middle and I'd rather not have epoxy running down the ends as the layup progresses...then again I suppose that would lean it out a bit, which is always a good thing. But I rather like being able to tack the layup in place and sort the bag before hitting the goo switch. The down side is figuring out a way to get the resin to the mold surface, but a bit of strategically placed flow media should do the trick nicely. Failure isn't cheap but it may be a necessary part of the learning curve. I'm not underestimating the difficulty of bringing it off as friends have had some puzzling failures recently.
Who knew formica made such a nice sanding batten? Oh and pool noodle foam trimmed with scissors. What commercial was it that ended with the word "SMOOOOOTH"? Or was it a sitcom? Maybe Don Knotts said it. Anyway the facets and grooves are disappearing nicely with a bit of old Spanish Archer.
Alex pointed out today that I receive more questions about my van than I do about the boat - or at least as many. From different groups of people of course. Funny how people gravitate to things they understand but which are just outside the mainstream.
Nice policeman pulled me over to inform me that I was grinding my wand off on the pavement on the way home, which is just as well as I plan to revamp the entire thing soon anyhow. Seems a bit strange that he didn't inquire about the DC and SD license plates on my rig, but I guess the boat was getting all the attention.
Time for a bit of sanding. Looks like Mothing for the Holidays as I will be working sporadically through the remainder of the month.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Mothing to the Beat of a Different Drummer
Another boring moth day at Long Beach:
If there is a reason to sail anywhere else, I haven't found it. There's even a good cheap breakfast and coffee shop nearby to help you fuel up before hitting the water: Chuck's Diner. Highly recommended - on Ocean I think.
Nobody out but me and the kiteboarders. I noticed they were all hanging pretty close to shore - I think this is because they cannot go upwind reliably, which I would think is a total drag, literally and figuratively, rather like downhill skiing except there is no chairlift to carry you and your equipment back up the beach. So everyone launches, does a few tricks on the way downhill, then sails to the beach, gathers the equipment, and walks back up the beach with their kites flying directly overhead. It is like some sort of bizarre parade or ultra slow-mo NASCAR event: go fast, jump up jump up and get down, turn left, walk up beach, repeat.
I sail out of the same spot, sheet in, sail about forty degrees higher and just as fast, sail upwind for awhile, turn down, reach and gybe, crash, futz with gantry, futz with flap, sail downwind some more, turn right, repeat.
In an interesting twist, I left the rear bung out, so my moth was getting progressively heavier throughout the afternoon. The interesting bit is that I think it actually helped me going upwind. Getting a few gallons of water to windward of the foils does wonders for your righting moment in a good breeze - boom right on centerline, pointing like mad, going like a banshee. I don't think I've ever gone upwind that easily or that fast before in breeze - perhaps the added ballast had nothing to do with it and it was just me figuring a few sail controls out, but it was certainly different from what I had experienced earlier in the afternoon. I do have to say that the wind was really up toward 20mph during that run - strongest of the afternoon, so perhaps that had something to do with it. I had the pleasure of sailing across the bow of a big leadmine on that tack; they were coming downwind along the beach and I was going up again. I don't know what it was but I was going uphill like a freight train.
Finally the remaining freeboard seemed quite small and I realized the bung issue and sailed in. Capsizing in the surf is not a good thing to do when your boat is too heavy to lift, but actually it wasn't too hard to lift the bow and get the tramps lined up with the waves to keep it from crashing around on the rack bar while the water drained out.
I keep stepping on fish in the surf. Not intentionally - I just walk around launching my boat and occasionally the ground wiggles frantically under my shoe as if to say "HEY - you're crushing my pelvis!" Greg tells me they are probably stingrays and that I should shuffle my feet to build up static electricity and shock them away before I end up with a spike in my leg. I think I have been fortunate in that most of the ones I have stepped on have been small, so they probably can't sting effectively yet. Either that or they are flounder or regular skates without stingers.
I regretted not having my camera in my life vest, as the sea lions had taken up station on the 500 gallon floating steel diesel tank which serves as a mooring ball for the tanker loading line. Sailing out toward it the sun was low in the sky behind, reflecting off the waves like a thousand mirrors, and where the water meets the sky a family of huge sea lions perched on a steel fuel tank, sunning themselves, with the bow of a huge tanker poking in from the left side of the frame. Maybe they'll be back again next week. They didn't seem to mind me much though when I came back down to windward of them the mother seemed to be smelling me, like a dog will sniff the air to pick up whatever it can. Who knew sea lions could smell anything? Anyway I have come close to running over seals but I think their reaction times are generally are too fast to get hit. I would really hate to run into one of these mammoth sea lion suckers in the water because I'm pretty sure that once off foils I'd be lunchmeat. They must weigh 5-600 lbs.
Offwind going better; played with gantry a lot and felt much more stable. Technique is probably improving also but having the proper setup makes the whole thing a ton easier.
I suspect there are many combinations of setup and technique which are all sailable. It is surprising how very small changes in flap or gantry angle change the downwind experience though.
One day I'll get the Velocitek out and find out how fast I am moving through the water. Frankly I am more interested in the tacking angles etc. though.
Alex Adams is still lurking about somewhere in the vicinity so perhaps I'll be able to get him out again before he disappears back to Weymoth.
When I got back to the beach and drained the many gallons of water from my boat, I walked her up on the beach where, despite the sun glaring in beneath some dark clouds, it began to rain lightly. The clouds then moved off slightly to the east, creating full double rainbows silhouetted against a dark gray background with the beach and palm trees bathed in bright golden light in super high-contrast from the low sun angle. If it hadn't been for the sirens and police helicopter circling overhead, I would have felt like I was an extra in the Wizard of Oz or some other dream-style Hollywood vehicle. But it was only my Moth and the natural beauty of southern California in December.
It was cold on the beach as I de-rigged - something like 55 degrees with the wind diminishing. May need a thicker wetsuit. Water temp lower than last week by a noticeable amount so probably mid to high 50s; possibly an effect of the rain we've been having and the surface runoff.
Picked up a clear plastic bag on the mainfoil out by the sea lions which sounded like an angry growling dog swimming along very quickly beneath the boat for a few hundred feet. Quite funny. Had to capsize to see the thing - completely transparent.
Linked up with Greg at Randy Reynolds' Christmas party, which was fun. Christmas boat parade was on, so had to leave the rig on the main drag and walk in a half mile, in the drizzle. The plan was to pick up the molds for the new lifting foil that Greg finished machining last week, duck out, and go to my work holiday party in Hollywood after stopping home to change clothes. Then I had one glass of wine, visited a bit, tried a jello shot, had some food. Combined with mothing all afternoon, a couple of drinks rendered me completely unable and unwilling to walk a half mile in the rain with hydrofoil molds, not to mention unable to drive my car in any sort of wakeful state up 405 and navigate into Hollywood. I did manage to make it home later after a few cups of coffee, but that was all the night had in store for me. Though I regret missing the work party, on the whole I have to say that I think I have my priorities pretty straight.
If there is a reason to sail anywhere else, I haven't found it. There's even a good cheap breakfast and coffee shop nearby to help you fuel up before hitting the water: Chuck's Diner. Highly recommended - on Ocean I think.
Nobody out but me and the kiteboarders. I noticed they were all hanging pretty close to shore - I think this is because they cannot go upwind reliably, which I would think is a total drag, literally and figuratively, rather like downhill skiing except there is no chairlift to carry you and your equipment back up the beach. So everyone launches, does a few tricks on the way downhill, then sails to the beach, gathers the equipment, and walks back up the beach with their kites flying directly overhead. It is like some sort of bizarre parade or ultra slow-mo NASCAR event: go fast, jump up jump up and get down, turn left, walk up beach, repeat.
I sail out of the same spot, sheet in, sail about forty degrees higher and just as fast, sail upwind for awhile, turn down, reach and gybe, crash, futz with gantry, futz with flap, sail downwind some more, turn right, repeat.
In an interesting twist, I left the rear bung out, so my moth was getting progressively heavier throughout the afternoon. The interesting bit is that I think it actually helped me going upwind. Getting a few gallons of water to windward of the foils does wonders for your righting moment in a good breeze - boom right on centerline, pointing like mad, going like a banshee. I don't think I've ever gone upwind that easily or that fast before in breeze - perhaps the added ballast had nothing to do with it and it was just me figuring a few sail controls out, but it was certainly different from what I had experienced earlier in the afternoon. I do have to say that the wind was really up toward 20mph during that run - strongest of the afternoon, so perhaps that had something to do with it. I had the pleasure of sailing across the bow of a big leadmine on that tack; they were coming downwind along the beach and I was going up again. I don't know what it was but I was going uphill like a freight train.
Finally the remaining freeboard seemed quite small and I realized the bung issue and sailed in. Capsizing in the surf is not a good thing to do when your boat is too heavy to lift, but actually it wasn't too hard to lift the bow and get the tramps lined up with the waves to keep it from crashing around on the rack bar while the water drained out.
I keep stepping on fish in the surf. Not intentionally - I just walk around launching my boat and occasionally the ground wiggles frantically under my shoe as if to say "HEY - you're crushing my pelvis!" Greg tells me they are probably stingrays and that I should shuffle my feet to build up static electricity and shock them away before I end up with a spike in my leg. I think I have been fortunate in that most of the ones I have stepped on have been small, so they probably can't sting effectively yet. Either that or they are flounder or regular skates without stingers.
I regretted not having my camera in my life vest, as the sea lions had taken up station on the 500 gallon floating steel diesel tank which serves as a mooring ball for the tanker loading line. Sailing out toward it the sun was low in the sky behind, reflecting off the waves like a thousand mirrors, and where the water meets the sky a family of huge sea lions perched on a steel fuel tank, sunning themselves, with the bow of a huge tanker poking in from the left side of the frame. Maybe they'll be back again next week. They didn't seem to mind me much though when I came back down to windward of them the mother seemed to be smelling me, like a dog will sniff the air to pick up whatever it can. Who knew sea lions could smell anything? Anyway I have come close to running over seals but I think their reaction times are generally are too fast to get hit. I would really hate to run into one of these mammoth sea lion suckers in the water because I'm pretty sure that once off foils I'd be lunchmeat. They must weigh 5-600 lbs.
Offwind going better; played with gantry a lot and felt much more stable. Technique is probably improving also but having the proper setup makes the whole thing a ton easier.
I suspect there are many combinations of setup and technique which are all sailable. It is surprising how very small changes in flap or gantry angle change the downwind experience though.
One day I'll get the Velocitek out and find out how fast I am moving through the water. Frankly I am more interested in the tacking angles etc. though.
Alex Adams is still lurking about somewhere in the vicinity so perhaps I'll be able to get him out again before he disappears back to Weymoth.
When I got back to the beach and drained the many gallons of water from my boat, I walked her up on the beach where, despite the sun glaring in beneath some dark clouds, it began to rain lightly. The clouds then moved off slightly to the east, creating full double rainbows silhouetted against a dark gray background with the beach and palm trees bathed in bright golden light in super high-contrast from the low sun angle. If it hadn't been for the sirens and police helicopter circling overhead, I would have felt like I was an extra in the Wizard of Oz or some other dream-style Hollywood vehicle. But it was only my Moth and the natural beauty of southern California in December.
It was cold on the beach as I de-rigged - something like 55 degrees with the wind diminishing. May need a thicker wetsuit. Water temp lower than last week by a noticeable amount so probably mid to high 50s; possibly an effect of the rain we've been having and the surface runoff.
Picked up a clear plastic bag on the mainfoil out by the sea lions which sounded like an angry growling dog swimming along very quickly beneath the boat for a few hundred feet. Quite funny. Had to capsize to see the thing - completely transparent.
Linked up with Greg at Randy Reynolds' Christmas party, which was fun. Christmas boat parade was on, so had to leave the rig on the main drag and walk in a half mile, in the drizzle. The plan was to pick up the molds for the new lifting foil that Greg finished machining last week, duck out, and go to my work holiday party in Hollywood after stopping home to change clothes. Then I had one glass of wine, visited a bit, tried a jello shot, had some food. Combined with mothing all afternoon, a couple of drinks rendered me completely unable and unwilling to walk a half mile in the rain with hydrofoil molds, not to mention unable to drive my car in any sort of wakeful state up 405 and navigate into Hollywood. I did manage to make it home later after a few cups of coffee, but that was all the night had in store for me. Though I regret missing the work party, on the whole I have to say that I think I have my priorities pretty straight.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Control is Overrated
Well when I finally awoke from my stupor this morning and checked the weather, the forecast was for 22-29 from the West with gusts over 30, but when I looked at the buoy, it said 10 with gusts to 15 at about 10AM, so I figured I'd chance it as the Sunday forecast was light and variable. So off I went. In the end, this is what the wind graph at Seal Beach/River's End showed:
Not bad mothing. Lots of smoking around upwind but serious control issues offwind. Some of these are due to my funky rudder twist repair, but some are just sheer stupidity and inexperience.
Lots of Lasers and Club 420s out, and I mean LOTS. US Sailing has a center at Long Beach, and I'd estimate something on the order of 30-40 youth sailors on the water racing in these conditions. Water temp from a nearby buoy was just a touch under 60 degrees; air temp when I started was 57F. Pretty hard to complain about this place from a weather standpoint.
Rains on Friday washed many, many plastic bags into the water. These sound distinctly like solid objects hitting the foil when you hit them at speed, and if they are big you basically crash. I thought one of them must have been a large fish, but no. I did hit other submerged things but apparently they were softer than my foils as I couldn't see any damage.
Smoked by the 420s upwind only to thoroughly embarrass myself heating it up on a reach, going too high, and stacking it - on camera. I'm sure there will be some YouTube clips but I didn't talk to them except to ask what my score for the stack was; they rated it a 7.5. Too bad I couldn't keep the wheels on for a minute or so as the RIB was wound-up and following me and the breeze was fantastic.
Replayed various types of offwind altitude debacles for most of the remainder of the afternoon; I have had a much easier time in the past maintaining stable flight offwind so clearly something is amiss with the wand setup. It doesn't help to have a sticky twistgrip either but I think I am not getting the proper wand response. I play the weight shifting game and adjust the rudder flap slightly as well as using the rig very dynamically to push the nose down when needed, but I need more help from the flap. May have to switch to straight wand but I think lubricating the cable and eliminating play will be the first order of business. The boat has been well used and some maintenance is to be expected.
Flying gybes require stable altitude control, which I didn't have today, so not much progress there, except a few which were pretty close to sticking but poor steering meant I dropped off foils before the end. Heading up aggressively is pretty important I'm finding, which is obvious from all the videos but it's always different doing it yourself.
Met Ed Hencken on the beach purely by chance as his son Hans was out Lasering. Apparently Hans, who has his own Bladerider that he shares with his two siblings, let the sailing program rope him into signing up for a team or something(!). I'm sure it's good practice, but I'm sure Hans was itching to be on his Moth today rather than the Laser, especially with me zooming by in various states of combobulation.
Clearly some momentum is developing in the San Diego fleet. Charlie McKee is trying to convince James Spithill to ship his Moth to SD to sail with Charlie, so that's another potential addition to the fleet. Ed knew of at least two more new boats coming to the area beyond Zack and the BR distributor in Newport, who each already have boats apparently. Looks like I'll be driving south to their regattas if the wind is good; otherwise launching from the beach at Long Beach is actually a pretty sweet setup even though the amenities are very basic, i.e. sand, water, wind, and a bathroom that is so basic the cinder block stall walls are only waist high. No footsie sting operations going on in these babies, I tell ya.
Anyway it will really be interesting to see what happens to the pecking order in the fleet with all these good sailors getting involved. Boathandling is such a large part of the game that bona fides may not count for much until people get enough sea miles under their foils to foil around the course. I expect I'm taking a bit longer than most to get the hang of offwind sailing, but truth be told I haven't worked on it very much until now, so I probably just have to pay my dues and figure out what the boat is trying to tell me once I get my flapper flapping. Can't wait to get together with some other Mothies and compare notes again as I haven't really sailed with any other Moths since BR days in the other Newport, an entire country and a summer away from sunny CA.
Foil development project is coming along; just about the time I get my current boat working properly again I'm sure it will be time to switch to the new one. It's a hard life, but much better than the alternative as the saying goes...
Not bad mothing. Lots of smoking around upwind but serious control issues offwind. Some of these are due to my funky rudder twist repair, but some are just sheer stupidity and inexperience.
Lots of Lasers and Club 420s out, and I mean LOTS. US Sailing has a center at Long Beach, and I'd estimate something on the order of 30-40 youth sailors on the water racing in these conditions. Water temp from a nearby buoy was just a touch under 60 degrees; air temp when I started was 57F. Pretty hard to complain about this place from a weather standpoint.
Rains on Friday washed many, many plastic bags into the water. These sound distinctly like solid objects hitting the foil when you hit them at speed, and if they are big you basically crash. I thought one of them must have been a large fish, but no. I did hit other submerged things but apparently they were softer than my foils as I couldn't see any damage.
Smoked by the 420s upwind only to thoroughly embarrass myself heating it up on a reach, going too high, and stacking it - on camera. I'm sure there will be some YouTube clips but I didn't talk to them except to ask what my score for the stack was; they rated it a 7.5. Too bad I couldn't keep the wheels on for a minute or so as the RIB was wound-up and following me and the breeze was fantastic.
Replayed various types of offwind altitude debacles for most of the remainder of the afternoon; I have had a much easier time in the past maintaining stable flight offwind so clearly something is amiss with the wand setup. It doesn't help to have a sticky twistgrip either but I think I am not getting the proper wand response. I play the weight shifting game and adjust the rudder flap slightly as well as using the rig very dynamically to push the nose down when needed, but I need more help from the flap. May have to switch to straight wand but I think lubricating the cable and eliminating play will be the first order of business. The boat has been well used and some maintenance is to be expected.
Flying gybes require stable altitude control, which I didn't have today, so not much progress there, except a few which were pretty close to sticking but poor steering meant I dropped off foils before the end. Heading up aggressively is pretty important I'm finding, which is obvious from all the videos but it's always different doing it yourself.
Met Ed Hencken on the beach purely by chance as his son Hans was out Lasering. Apparently Hans, who has his own Bladerider that he shares with his two siblings, let the sailing program rope him into signing up for a team or something(!). I'm sure it's good practice, but I'm sure Hans was itching to be on his Moth today rather than the Laser, especially with me zooming by in various states of combobulation.
Clearly some momentum is developing in the San Diego fleet. Charlie McKee is trying to convince James Spithill to ship his Moth to SD to sail with Charlie, so that's another potential addition to the fleet. Ed knew of at least two more new boats coming to the area beyond Zack and the BR distributor in Newport, who each already have boats apparently. Looks like I'll be driving south to their regattas if the wind is good; otherwise launching from the beach at Long Beach is actually a pretty sweet setup even though the amenities are very basic, i.e. sand, water, wind, and a bathroom that is so basic the cinder block stall walls are only waist high. No footsie sting operations going on in these babies, I tell ya.
Anyway it will really be interesting to see what happens to the pecking order in the fleet with all these good sailors getting involved. Boathandling is such a large part of the game that bona fides may not count for much until people get enough sea miles under their foils to foil around the course. I expect I'm taking a bit longer than most to get the hang of offwind sailing, but truth be told I haven't worked on it very much until now, so I probably just have to pay my dues and figure out what the boat is trying to tell me once I get my flapper flapping. Can't wait to get together with some other Mothies and compare notes again as I haven't really sailed with any other Moths since BR days in the other Newport, an entire country and a summer away from sunny CA.
Foil development project is coming along; just about the time I get my current boat working properly again I'm sure it will be time to switch to the new one. It's a hard life, but much better than the alternative as the saying goes...
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Moth Talk, LA Style
Some time ago on the UK Moth listserve there was some discussion of appropriate terminology for the gybe-to-weather technique used (to debatable effect) by rohanveal.com at the Denmark worlds. Some thought the term"Gack" too hoodie for the moth "class"; hence "wearing ship" was offered up as a substitute. This suggestion was universally ignored as far as anyone on this side of the Atlantic can tell.
Because all this gacking happened long before anyone began working on the foiling tack in a serious way, the following corollary question was never asked, at least publicly: If a foiling gybe is a gack, is a foiling tack a fack?
Entire vistas of unexplored linguistic potential open before us. Let the games begin.
Because all this gacking happened long before anyone began working on the foiling tack in a serious way, the following corollary question was never asked, at least publicly: If a foiling gybe is a gack, is a foiling tack a fack?
Entire vistas of unexplored linguistic potential open before us. Let the games begin.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Blogito Ergo Sum
It's official: we exist.
Without a presence in cyberspace a fleet just isn't a fleet anymore. No place to hang your cyber-wetsuit, dry your cyber sailing shoes, fix your cyber-yacht, or compare cyber notes. No place to exchange cyberpleasantries, or take a cybernap.
With all due deference to our video gaming programmer brethren at Sim City, we now offer a web portal to the ultimate in online entertainment: reality. Now you can visit our website at www.int-moth.us, get all hot and bothered, and actually contact someone RIGHT NOW who will take all that pent-up anxiety and direct it somewhere more productive than Sailing Anarchy forums. That's right - if you play your cards right, you can actually go sailing on a Moth. We give you gps coordinates and a time, and you give us, well, nothing. Unless you're unbearably attractive and female, in which case some of us may accept payment in smiles.
So forget Will Wright and the upcoming release of Spore. You've been there, and you have the myopia, bad posture and carpal tunnel syndrome to show for it. Take the blue pill, drop through the wormhole over at our website, and don't ever look back. When it comes to Mothing, the truth is so much stranger and more wonderful than fiction that software engineers will need decades to catch up. And when they do, we'll have moved on yet again.
Without a presence in cyberspace a fleet just isn't a fleet anymore. No place to hang your cyber-wetsuit, dry your cyber sailing shoes, fix your cyber-yacht, or compare cyber notes. No place to exchange cyberpleasantries, or take a cybernap.
With all due deference to our video gaming programmer brethren at Sim City, we now offer a web portal to the ultimate in online entertainment: reality. Now you can visit our website at www.int-moth.us, get all hot and bothered, and actually contact someone RIGHT NOW who will take all that pent-up anxiety and direct it somewhere more productive than Sailing Anarchy forums. That's right - if you play your cards right, you can actually go sailing on a Moth. We give you gps coordinates and a time, and you give us, well, nothing. Unless you're unbearably attractive and female, in which case some of us may accept payment in smiles.
So forget Will Wright and the upcoming release of Spore. You've been there, and you have the myopia, bad posture and carpal tunnel syndrome to show for it. Take the blue pill, drop through the wormhole over at our website, and don't ever look back. When it comes to Mothing, the truth is so much stranger and more wonderful than fiction that software engineers will need decades to catch up. And when they do, we'll have moved on yet again.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Can't Get There From Here
Off to the beach on Sunday, only to find foggy conditions, 64 degrees and wind out of the west at 3 knots. Greg was so discouraged he rented a bicycle for the afternoon. He tried to talk me out of going sailing, but I wasn't listening. Sure enough, the sun finally burned through and the wind picked up to about 7 knots - foiling conditions.
So I rigged the boat after driving around Long Beach for an hour looking for change for a 20 and some press-on copper shroud placeholders to keep the prodder out of tilt-a-whirl mode. Lumbered into the surf, which is sort of like the surf in your bathtub only with more plastic bags floating in it, then up, up and away.
Mothing in this condition is really a lot like iceboating in that the apparent is pretty much always enough forward that without trying very hard you can convince yourself that you are going upwind on just about any point of sail north of a very broad reach. After reaching around going quite fast but not making any progress toward my destination (the other side of oil island #1) I realized that if I didn't try to point at all cost I was never going to get anywhere. I mean I was zooming all over the place to no great effect, sort of like we used to do in high school on 8th street but with a lot less horsepower and no girls to talk to. The leadmines I buzzed were all agaggle but they left me in their martini-scented bad air and disappeared.
So that was a good lesson: if you want to go uphill, try pointing. I know it sounds stupid, but fundamentally it isn't that much different from reaching, except that you are going slower. So my new technique is to go about as slow and high as I can go without dropping off the foils or working too hard, and heel like crazy. I haven't fired up the Velocitek in earnest yet but am looking forward to seeing some VMG numbers (or CMG or whatever).
There are about four or five people in the country who can gybe on foils, on a Moth anyway. Maybe seven if you count the kids in San Diego. Since none of us have been foiling longer than a year, I think we can pretty well conclude that this is not rocket science, and that anyone who practices diligently will figure it out. Keeping it figured out over a range of conditions and making it reliable would seem to be the real challenges, but that has as much to do with height control as anything else. So if you're one of the gybing few, congratulations.
Please do not interpret this as a plea for advice on the subject, however. I am entirely as capable of stacking it in repeatedly until I get the hang of it as you were, if not moreso. When I do get the hang of it, I will probably not spend much time writing about it. I mean, we are not talking about anything truly difficult like tacking a Canoe here, which if anyone in the world ever figured it out would certainly be news.
The interesting thing about Long Beach on Sunday was that the wind was blowing 12-15 from the West out by the breakwater (sort of SW of my launch point - mostly S), but a gentle Santa Ana filled in from the North along the shore, which faces South. The gradient breeze between these two locations veered dramatically the closer to shore I got, until, well, I couldn't get there at all, and not for lack of pointing: the wind just got progressively lighter and and more adverse as one approached the shore, until it stopped blowing at all in a small band just outside the surf. OK I got there, in lowrider mode, sitting well-in on the tramp. Or close enough to swim for it.
I have concluded that Acetate is fast. I have no data to support this conclusion, but I have messed around with it enough to know that it isn't slow, and that is enough for me.
So I rigged the boat after driving around Long Beach for an hour looking for change for a 20 and some press-on copper shroud placeholders to keep the prodder out of tilt-a-whirl mode. Lumbered into the surf, which is sort of like the surf in your bathtub only with more plastic bags floating in it, then up, up and away.
Mothing in this condition is really a lot like iceboating in that the apparent is pretty much always enough forward that without trying very hard you can convince yourself that you are going upwind on just about any point of sail north of a very broad reach. After reaching around going quite fast but not making any progress toward my destination (the other side of oil island #1) I realized that if I didn't try to point at all cost I was never going to get anywhere. I mean I was zooming all over the place to no great effect, sort of like we used to do in high school on 8th street but with a lot less horsepower and no girls to talk to. The leadmines I buzzed were all agaggle but they left me in their martini-scented bad air and disappeared.
So that was a good lesson: if you want to go uphill, try pointing. I know it sounds stupid, but fundamentally it isn't that much different from reaching, except that you are going slower. So my new technique is to go about as slow and high as I can go without dropping off the foils or working too hard, and heel like crazy. I haven't fired up the Velocitek in earnest yet but am looking forward to seeing some VMG numbers (or CMG or whatever).
There are about four or five people in the country who can gybe on foils, on a Moth anyway. Maybe seven if you count the kids in San Diego. Since none of us have been foiling longer than a year, I think we can pretty well conclude that this is not rocket science, and that anyone who practices diligently will figure it out. Keeping it figured out over a range of conditions and making it reliable would seem to be the real challenges, but that has as much to do with height control as anything else. So if you're one of the gybing few, congratulations.
Please do not interpret this as a plea for advice on the subject, however. I am entirely as capable of stacking it in repeatedly until I get the hang of it as you were, if not moreso. When I do get the hang of it, I will probably not spend much time writing about it. I mean, we are not talking about anything truly difficult like tacking a Canoe here, which if anyone in the world ever figured it out would certainly be news.
The interesting thing about Long Beach on Sunday was that the wind was blowing 12-15 from the West out by the breakwater (sort of SW of my launch point - mostly S), but a gentle Santa Ana filled in from the North along the shore, which faces South. The gradient breeze between these two locations veered dramatically the closer to shore I got, until, well, I couldn't get there at all, and not for lack of pointing: the wind just got progressively lighter and and more adverse as one approached the shore, until it stopped blowing at all in a small band just outside the surf. OK I got there, in lowrider mode, sitting well-in on the tramp. Or close enough to swim for it.
I have concluded that Acetate is fast. I have no data to support this conclusion, but I have messed around with it enough to know that it isn't slow, and that is enough for me.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Mutha of Invention
If you've never seen one, a Prowler rudder flap mechanism is sort of like having a small swiss watch made of nylon sitting in your tiller. It is controlled by the skipper via the tiller extension, which connects to the tiller via several satellite uplinks, a modem, and a rubber hose. But this is not just any rubber hose, mind you! It is a rubber hose worthy of German engineering awards, with RTV applied strategically to internal worm gears, small transverse hoselocking fiberglass keys, and small springs to maintain an all-important, quintessentially hoselike circular cross section while being tortured at impossible angles by the skipper! Within the tiller itself, this same highly-engineered and reinforced "hose" attaches to a worm gear actuating beautifully drilled acme threaded captive nuts, sliding one of them fore and aft when the tiller is twisted. This nut in turn pushes or pulls a small rod from a model airplane, which in turn tilts a cam and pushes on another rod. It is this final rod which plunges headlong and fearlessly down the trailing edge of the rudder, only to be held captive by a rotating brass barrel within the wafer-thin rudder flap itself. This assembly is the sort of robust, beautifully designed mechanism one expects from a builder with a thorough understanding of both his product and his craft.
Of course no mechanism is immune to abuse, and in this case the rubber hose itself is generally the first element to give up the ghost when abused by newbies or simply used a lot. Mine failed and was shortened once, only to split nearly in two a short while later. Thankfully neither of these failures caused any hardship in returning to shore. Not a great inconvenience, and relatively easily repaired - with the proper tools. And good light. Some patience doesn't hurt here either. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
None of these qualities were in great supply this past Sunday, when a small group of enthusiasts gathered to put the Prowler through her paces. Naturally I had overlooked the needed repair from the previous weekend, as my foils live in the back of my van most of the time and only emerge when they go on the boat. Fortunately on Sunday I noted the broken tiller hose before we all got fully rubberized in our wetsuits, so that a repair was easily effected in the warm Southern California sun with a minimum of discomfort. OK, that last part is a lie. We were all suited up and ready to go, and I pulled the rudder out of the van with no extension on it. Hmmm...
Perhaps this would be a good juncture at which to note that at least one of the members of the group had driven two hours to try the boat. And that this person has a habit of writing in sailing publications with a rather large readership.
I have often found when confronted by such moments that the most useful demeanor is one of puzzled nonchalance, of the sort one might assume had aliens snuck in through the van's air vents and sabotaged the tiller in an effort to keep foiling technology from reaching the rest of the galaxy. This strategy generally buys me enough time to figure out whether I am completely screwed, or only mostly screwed, before a small mutinous riot ensues and whatever credibility I possess in the world of Mothing (admittedly not much to begin with mind you) evaporates like starter fluid from hot carbon fiber.
As one might gather from the description above, the Ilett adjustable-flap tiller/rudder is not a machine to be disassembled without trepidation, a controlled environment, and a small team of Swiss watchmakers in white lab coats with magnifying jeweler's loupes to relentlessly track and recover any and all lost micro-components. So while headlines such as "Moth Newbie Bombs Utterly in Attempt to Impress Well-Known Journalist" and "Back to the Farm League for LA Moth Sailor" flashed through my mind, I reflected calmly upon my mantra: This looks like a job for some Duck Tape.
Now before you get all hot and bothered about my conflating avian species with adhesive products, I'll have you know that I've done my research on the subject. It is well known that during World War II ducks were in fact employed alongside women in factories to help fill the shortage of qualified male workers. In some of these factories, ducks rose to levels of management, and some even managed to sock enough cash away to go out on their own as war profiteers in the tape industry. Hence the name Duck Tape. Enough said.
Where were we...oh yes - assembling swiss timepieces on worktables consisting primarily of sand. After a moment's flirtation with an orange screwdriver, a voice from Vancouver echoed through my head, recalling a certain afternoon spent on hands and knees in the lawn searching for critical elements of a Prowler tiller adjustment mechanism. Not wishing to add to the folklore on the subject, and well aware that the most deadly element of a recoverable situation is overconfidence in one's ability to reassemble complex mechanisms, particularly when dressed in a wetsuit with rivulets of sweat pooling in its nether-regions, I offered to no one in particular, as though expressing a view that the tiller might in fact spontaneously recompose itself, and has done so in the past on numerous occasions, the statement: "If only we had some tape".
Before we proceed further, a bit of background. When God invented the four wheel drive, four door, long bed diesel Ford pickup, He kept it to himself for many eons knowing, in fact, that if any reasonably industrious, independent human ever obtained such a vehicle, they might in fact be able to accomplish feats formerly reserved only for Gods and the cast of Star Trek. The ability to summon soggy rolls of Duck Tape from ether was apparently one of the long list of said feats, fiery thefts notwithstanding, which confined Prometheus, his Ford pickup, and his liver-eating eagle to a remote mountaintop in symbiotic immortality. Fortunately for the purposes of our story, the secret was already out, and just such a roll of Duck Tape emerged from just such a Full Sized Crew Cab Diesel Ford pickup. Man, I love it when a plan comes together.
Elitists among us might opine that Duck Tape is no match for the ingenuity of Swiss watchmakers, but in the interest of brevity, suffice it to say that they would be wrong:
Though a first attempt suffered from inexpert application, a retape of the joint provided a stable tiller universal (and more importantly an entirely stable foiling experience) for the whole afternoon. Duck Pride! Look on my works, ye reclusive Australian artisans, and despair! For I am Ozzy-mandius, conjurer of Duck Tape, ruler of nutshells, king of infinite space!
Ok, on aesthetic grounds we are not quite up to Pininfarina standards. But the smile on my face from doublehanding the Moth in divide-and-conquer mode for hours, capsizing in a huge variety of ways, losing my hat, recovering it, and finally succumbing in a tag-team mothing session to a rather-too-large windless patch, is none the smaller for it.
Of course it may have transpired that, despite mutual consent and due entirely to uncontrollable circumstances, said writer, sailor, and otherwise generally intrepid adventurer was left rather ungainfully bobbing about in Long Beach harbor with a longish swim to shore. If so, I expect to be roundly pilloried shortly in the sailing publication of your choice. But with any luck I'll have a chance to make it right down the line.
On which note a concluding poem:
Of course no mechanism is immune to abuse, and in this case the rubber hose itself is generally the first element to give up the ghost when abused by newbies or simply used a lot. Mine failed and was shortened once, only to split nearly in two a short while later. Thankfully neither of these failures caused any hardship in returning to shore. Not a great inconvenience, and relatively easily repaired - with the proper tools. And good light. Some patience doesn't hurt here either. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
None of these qualities were in great supply this past Sunday, when a small group of enthusiasts gathered to put the Prowler through her paces. Naturally I had overlooked the needed repair from the previous weekend, as my foils live in the back of my van most of the time and only emerge when they go on the boat. Fortunately on Sunday I noted the broken tiller hose before we all got fully rubberized in our wetsuits, so that a repair was easily effected in the warm Southern California sun with a minimum of discomfort. OK, that last part is a lie. We were all suited up and ready to go, and I pulled the rudder out of the van with no extension on it. Hmmm...
Perhaps this would be a good juncture at which to note that at least one of the members of the group had driven two hours to try the boat. And that this person has a habit of writing in sailing publications with a rather large readership.
I have often found when confronted by such moments that the most useful demeanor is one of puzzled nonchalance, of the sort one might assume had aliens snuck in through the van's air vents and sabotaged the tiller in an effort to keep foiling technology from reaching the rest of the galaxy. This strategy generally buys me enough time to figure out whether I am completely screwed, or only mostly screwed, before a small mutinous riot ensues and whatever credibility I possess in the world of Mothing (admittedly not much to begin with mind you) evaporates like starter fluid from hot carbon fiber.
As one might gather from the description above, the Ilett adjustable-flap tiller/rudder is not a machine to be disassembled without trepidation, a controlled environment, and a small team of Swiss watchmakers in white lab coats with magnifying jeweler's loupes to relentlessly track and recover any and all lost micro-components. So while headlines such as "Moth Newbie Bombs Utterly in Attempt to Impress Well-Known Journalist" and "Back to the Farm League for LA Moth Sailor" flashed through my mind, I reflected calmly upon my mantra: This looks like a job for some Duck Tape.
Now before you get all hot and bothered about my conflating avian species with adhesive products, I'll have you know that I've done my research on the subject. It is well known that during World War II ducks were in fact employed alongside women in factories to help fill the shortage of qualified male workers. In some of these factories, ducks rose to levels of management, and some even managed to sock enough cash away to go out on their own as war profiteers in the tape industry. Hence the name Duck Tape. Enough said.
Where were we...oh yes - assembling swiss timepieces on worktables consisting primarily of sand. After a moment's flirtation with an orange screwdriver, a voice from Vancouver echoed through my head, recalling a certain afternoon spent on hands and knees in the lawn searching for critical elements of a Prowler tiller adjustment mechanism. Not wishing to add to the folklore on the subject, and well aware that the most deadly element of a recoverable situation is overconfidence in one's ability to reassemble complex mechanisms, particularly when dressed in a wetsuit with rivulets of sweat pooling in its nether-regions, I offered to no one in particular, as though expressing a view that the tiller might in fact spontaneously recompose itself, and has done so in the past on numerous occasions, the statement: "If only we had some tape".
Before we proceed further, a bit of background. When God invented the four wheel drive, four door, long bed diesel Ford pickup, He kept it to himself for many eons knowing, in fact, that if any reasonably industrious, independent human ever obtained such a vehicle, they might in fact be able to accomplish feats formerly reserved only for Gods and the cast of Star Trek. The ability to summon soggy rolls of Duck Tape from ether was apparently one of the long list of said feats, fiery thefts notwithstanding, which confined Prometheus, his Ford pickup, and his liver-eating eagle to a remote mountaintop in symbiotic immortality. Fortunately for the purposes of our story, the secret was already out, and just such a roll of Duck Tape emerged from just such a Full Sized Crew Cab Diesel Ford pickup. Man, I love it when a plan comes together.
Elitists among us might opine that Duck Tape is no match for the ingenuity of Swiss watchmakers, but in the interest of brevity, suffice it to say that they would be wrong:
Though a first attempt suffered from inexpert application, a retape of the joint provided a stable tiller universal (and more importantly an entirely stable foiling experience) for the whole afternoon. Duck Pride! Look on my works, ye reclusive Australian artisans, and despair! For I am Ozzy-mandius, conjurer of Duck Tape, ruler of nutshells, king of infinite space!
Ok, on aesthetic grounds we are not quite up to Pininfarina standards. But the smile on my face from doublehanding the Moth in divide-and-conquer mode for hours, capsizing in a huge variety of ways, losing my hat, recovering it, and finally succumbing in a tag-team mothing session to a rather-too-large windless patch, is none the smaller for it.
Of course it may have transpired that, despite mutual consent and due entirely to uncontrollable circumstances, said writer, sailor, and otherwise generally intrepid adventurer was left rather ungainfully bobbing about in Long Beach harbor with a longish swim to shore. If so, I expect to be roundly pilloried shortly in the sailing publication of your choice. But with any luck I'll have a chance to make it right down the line.
On which note a concluding poem:
I Could Give All to Time
To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.
- Robert Frost
Monday, October 22, 2007
Supernatural
A 48 mph Santa Ana pummeled Cat Beach, creating sand dunes around parked cars. Photo GK.
Ol' Santana ain't got nuthin' on the Santa Ana that cranked out of southwest Utah and opened a can of good ol' fashioned Whupass (TM) on southern California Sunday. The beating mainly took the form of wildfires caused by downed power lines, which then seemingly burned half of Malibu, along with various other parts of the Southland area. The fires were aided by the 5-7% humidity of the wind. From a mothing standpoint, it was a total washout, with gusts to 48mph on the breakwater outside Long Beach. Winds in the mountains were recorded at speeds up to 111mph.
Strangely enough, there was virtually no wind in Seal Beach when I went into a kite shop for some supplies, but when I came out fifteen minutes later there was amazing breeze and the tiny channel between Seal Beach and Long Beach was pure roiling spindrift. The wind was puffy but remarkably strong and it stayed that way for several hours, showing no signs of backing off as we patiently walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch, came back, hung out by the cars letting our ears fill up with sand, and finally rolled out of the parking lot and drove home without untying a single line from the trailer.
More Mothing next week, and more info on the fires HERE
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Moth-jitsu
Headed out to oil island to tank up
It occurred to me today, while watching pretty good sailors flail around with the Moth, that there are two more or less distinct skill sets at play in this game. First, there is Mothing. This involves somehow getting yourself onto a very skinny boat and keeping it upright long enough to sail it. Mothing would also include figuring out how to do tacks and gybes in lowrider mode, how to carry the boat into the water, etc.
Foiling incorporates Mothing, but then rapidly transcends it. Suddenly there is the possibility of flying too high or too low, auguring in to windward, stacking, capsizing to leeward by heeling ever so slightly in that direction, trimming the rudder, and aerial gybing.
Foiling seems to get people into Mothing, but Mothing keeps them busy for awhile before they can get very serious about foiling. Of course there are the talented exceptions, but these people spend a lot of time sailing small, high performance dinghies for the mostpart.
Today we got out late due to a running marathon in Long Beach that closed half the town down and prevented us from accessing our launch area. So over the fence with the Moth and out to sea. Phil and Greg each took a turn with impressive virgin talent on Phil's part and a big improvement by Greg over last week's effort. I made some cable length adjustments which seemed to smooth things out a bit but I think the gantry needs some fine tuning as I am up and down a bit too much offwind. Conditions were perhaps a bit much for learning at 12-15 earlier in the day, moderating toward sunset. The tiller universal cut my second go short but hung in there long enough to get me back to shore.
Cold enough in the water for a drysuit, though apparenly the seals on wetsuits are so good now that you don't really get wet in them any more, so the difference between wet and dry is becoming a matter of semantics. Greg had a toasty full arm wetsuit on and seemed warm enough, though he was generating a lot of heat through hard work and capsize recovery getting to know the boat.
Breeze moderated toward end of the day but there was enough left after Phil gave up the boat to take him for a brief foil two up. He is 160 and I am about 165 for a total of 325 pounds on the boat. I went out on the rack alone and kept him in the middle for fear of getting a bit too powered up, plus it's kind of hard to coordinate with someone new to the boat. So he got a taste of foiling anyway. Impressive what these foils will lift when they have to.
Ran into fireball twirlers on the beach after dinner and got some video but then they ran out of gas, so you will just have to take my word for the fact that it was a pretty sight while it lasted.
More photos coming whenever the blogging software lets me upload them.
Phil demonstrates Karate Kid moves on the launch pad
If you spent more time mothing and less time standing around looking geeky you'd be able to gybe two up like Bora...
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Sign of the Times
I'm not sure if my paper delivery guy aims for this Agave, or if it reaches out somehow and grabs the paper, but the plant is the closest thing I've ever seen to kite-eating tree. I mean, I walk out to find an LA Times stuck in the Agave at least four mornings a week, sometimes more. Maybe the paper guy doesn't like Tequila? Anyway it's apropos because the Times' editor just quit within the past year after the parent company (Chicago Tribune) cut the newsroom staff to unprecedented levels, so they're dealing with some thorny issues at the moment.Sailing-wise, apparently Long Beach is one of those fantasy spots where the wind blows reasonably hard, even when it isn't supposed to! With weather like this it's tough to figure out why there isn't a windsurfer strapped on every car: 15-18 and steady from the West, high 70s air temp. I will say that a fair number of kites were out today, and weaving between them does require a bit of care, as most of them are just reaching back and forth on the edge of control trying not to go downwind! The ones trying aerials sensibly venture farther out, presumably so as not to be tied in knots by the newbies. In any event a fine sailing day with Greg out on a new prototype picnic tri he's working on, which proved a very capable R&R vessel and video platform. Horses for courses. Everything held together pretty well on both boats although my vang needs rerigging so the sail looks like hell in the video, and Greg did lose his daggerboard at one point. He gave mothing a lengthy try with mixed results but made quite a lot of progress on what is admittedly a steep, slippery learning slope for a guy used to sailing foilers with THREE foils...he mentioned that yesterday he and his friend A. had the speedo pegged at 38 MPH (33 knots) FOR MOST OF THE AFTERNOON. Something to shoot for I guess...
I am working on the gybes but actually was having enough problems tacking today - probably 17-18 out by the oil platforms and lumpy but I think it was just not enough time in the boat lately. Never really had any problems tacking in that sort of wind before so it was kind of surprising in a very annoying way! Three A-cats out today (presumably training for worlds next month in Islamorada) but I was basically too knackered to do any speed testing against them after breaking my tacking sequence down and building it back up again - fortunately the last tack before heading in was a beauty so I felt like I was back on track.
Still haven't got the Velocitek mounted on any sort of plate so no tracks to share.
Canoes should be at the HPDO at American Yacht Club in Rye and I think Peter and Bora were planning to be there with Moths, so it will be interesting to see what Bora writes about it.
Vids coming soon, so stay tuned...(don't you hate it when they say that?)...
Alive to Foil another day...
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Moth Myths
At some point there was some talk about whether seaweed is a big problem for hydrofoil Moths. In general, the consensus among experienced foiler sailors has been that it presents no more of an issue than in other boats, which is probably true. However it must be the case then that kelp is excluded from most people's definitions of seaweed, because short of hitting a crab pot (ask me how I know), few things will bring a Moth to a halt from full foiling height like a nice big clump of kelp.
I have no idea how difficult it is to back a VO70 down to clear the keel, but I suspect it is easier than trying to sail a Moth backwards. If you're lucky, you'll only grab a small bit of the stuff, which will make your Moth nose around in the drink like a pig searching for truffles while you sort out what to do next. I have to say that it does provide excellent practice in crash tacking, because the clumps are often barely visible until you are on top of them and if you're foiling, you have about two nanoseconds to execute an avoidance maneuver.
Going to need another wetsuit - I'll bet the water at Cabrillo Beach wasn't much over 60 today, if at all. Nice place otherwise, but not much use trying to sail on the inside by the launch ramp as it's too shallow and there's too much weed. Extremely tame racoons add some novelty value to the whole experience around dusk.
I have no idea how difficult it is to back a VO70 down to clear the keel, but I suspect it is easier than trying to sail a Moth backwards. If you're lucky, you'll only grab a small bit of the stuff, which will make your Moth nose around in the drink like a pig searching for truffles while you sort out what to do next. I have to say that it does provide excellent practice in crash tacking, because the clumps are often barely visible until you are on top of them and if you're foiling, you have about two nanoseconds to execute an avoidance maneuver.
Going to need another wetsuit - I'll bet the water at Cabrillo Beach wasn't much over 60 today, if at all. Nice place otherwise, but not much use trying to sail on the inside by the launch ramp as it's too shallow and there's too much weed. Extremely tame racoons add some novelty value to the whole experience around dusk.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Pity the Poor Wingbar
Somewhere in Ohio my trailer axle failed and the trailer tipped over on, well, my Moth wingbar. The whole program ground to a halt on the shoulder, and then it started to rain, just as the last light was fading from the sky. It was all pretty catastrophic - one moment you are listening to the radio in air conditioned comfort, with a little John McLaughlin guitar jazz playing, and the next moment all hell has broken loose and you are dragging some amalgam of carbon, wood, rubber and steel down the interstate making all kinds of sparks and ugly noises. I managed to right the trailer and drag it to the nearest off ramp, then rebuild the trailer by replacing the undercarriage with a new one. That got me to California, where my moth was now unsailable. So one of my first projects after setting up the garage shop was to undertake a repair. Just in case anyone else out there ever has to do this, I'll post the steps I used. It goes without saying that you should use full barrier precautions with the epoxy and avoid inhaling too many fumes, and always use a nice particulate respirator with a tight seal when sanding composites. These instructions are aimed at people with some experience building composite widgets, but not much, because that's me! And if you are not of a technical bent, or have no interest in knowing how to accomplish this task, you can stop reading now and go back to YouTube, unless you are at work, in which case you should get up and go for a cup of coffee.
1. Make a new partial circumference carbon sleeve, using the intact bar as a male mold. I used two strips of 5.7oz carbon, wrapping the tube with mylar packing tape as a release agent. There can be no gaps in the tape or you risk it sticking to the bar, and the fewer tape wrinkles the better. Squeegee as much resin out of the carbon as possible before sticking it on the bar, and then wrap the whole mess with peel ply and electrical tape, stretching it a good bit as it goes on to provide uniform tension. If you can find 2' tape great, but it's usually expensive and the skinny stuff works also if you don't mind doing a million wraps. You should overlap about 50%; more is better but anything over 50 takes forever. Make this sleeve twice as long as the area you are repairing.
2. After the epoxy kicks, Take the sleeve off the tube, pull the peel ply off, and admire it for a second. Then cut it in half normal to the long axis. Trim half to fit inside the tube. Sand the inside and outside of the broken tube, and the inside of one of your two sleeves (the other one has a peel ply surface on its outside so it needs no sanding). Now they are ready to bond over the c-shaped broken tube. Lube up the sleeve with thickened epoxy (I used West System High Density Filler, which I think is just milled cotton fibers - a bit heavy but really strong) and jam it inside the broken tube (this will stretch your vocabulary so it's best to not have any kids around while you do it). Take the other sleeve and bond it over the outside of the broken tube. Put some peel ply on or just wrap it with Mylar packing tape, putting LOTS of tension on to compress the outer sleeve against the broken/half tube and against the inner sleeve. If you put too much tension on, you will end up with this section being smaller diameter than the rest of the tube, which is undesirable cosmetically but otherwise of no particular import. As a final step, put the bar into position on the boat, with the ends telescoping over their respective mates. This will ensure that everything is lined up while it goes off. It goes without saying that some tape shoule be applied over the socket in the broken bar to keep goo out, and it doesn't hurt to put a little wax on the crossbar male ends; otherwise the bar may be permanently bonded to the cross bar after this step! Give it a night to kick.
3. When you are done, you should have something that looks like this:
It has a big hole in the end for the front cross piece, but you really should not be able to see that hole, because this part of the bar has a cap to keep water out. So the next steps are to reinforce any partially weakened tubing that was not covered by the sleeves (a good bit in my case) and then make an end cap and bond it on.4. I had a good bit of bar where two or three of the layers of original carbon had been ground away, but not the entire wall. This needed to be reinforced to get that part of the bar back to its original strength. This is pretty straightforward - just sand the bar a bit, cut some long strips that extend slightly beyond the affected area, put them on and wrap with your tape of choice. It might look something like this while it is curing:
5. Make an end cap. This is sort of a two step process. To brigde the big hole in the end of the bar, you need to put something into it to provide a nice surface for the carbon to lay on, because otherwise it will hang in space and not be the right shape. So the strategy is make a light cap using some sort of foam as a mold, then release that, get the foam out, trim the cap, and then bond it to the bar as a second step with more layers of carbon over the top and tape over those to compress it all. Simple, right? Again, be sure to keep goo out of the socket.6. After this step, take all the tape off. You will likely have plenty of surface imperfections, bumps etc. unless you have been doing this for awhile. So get out a chunk of 2x4 and some 36 grit sandpaper and make it look right. You have probably used way too much carbon and resin, so some of it needs to come off anyway. Your tramps have to slide over this thing, so there should be no big bumps or ridges on the main part. My corner came out a bit bumpy because I didn't do a careful job with mylar while making the end cap, so it didn't fit quite right. I also used the wide tape on the corner, which was suboptimal because it bunched up inside the corner. So put the mylar on carefully and use narrow electrical tape for best results. I did not grind the bumps off the corner because there are only three layers of carbon there and they are pretty highly loaded. So far it has held up well.
7. After an 30-60 minutes of hard sanding and trimming you should have a functional bar. You will note, in the case of a nice prepreg original product, that the end you just repaired is somewhat heavier than the other end. But don't sweat it - it's pretty much impossible to match prepreg resin ratios with a wet layup, and with some care you should be able to maintain a better balance than this, which isn't really that bad in my view:
That's it. Now rig your tramps and go sailing!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Los Angeles Moth Fleet - A Majority of One
Somebody once said (not sure just who) that Democracy is the recurring illusion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. On days like today you have to wonder. A bunch of kiteboarders showed up at Cat Beach in Long Beach Harbor, played around for awhile, decided there wasn't enough wind to have any fun, and went home. I arrived and rigged my moth at about 4pm, just as everyone was leaving. Some kite guys came over to ask me what my boat was, and they seemed genuinely surprised that I could go out in 8-12 knots of breeze and have a good time. The Moth may not be for everyone because it is fragile, difficult to sail, and sort of expensive compared to kiteboards and windsurfers, and the Moth's foil system may be pretty crude, but it seems unique among fast wind toys in that it is fun in the moderate stuff - not just when it is blowing old boots! In conditions like today, I'm hard pressed to think of a boat I'd rather be sailing, but then that's why I sail a Moth I suppose! Just figuring out how low you can soak it before falling off is completely challenging and interesting, at least for a novice like me. Some of the windsurfing guys were complaining about the lack of wind also - none of them were sailing. This seems strange, because I am pretty sure they can hoist 10 or 11sqm of sail on those things, which should be plenty of sail to have a lot of fun even when it is light. I guess it's true what they say - eventually you get used to any amount of speed.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Welcome to the working week
Hello to all my friends and family, and anyone else tuned to this frequency. You are listening to Planet Moth, broadcasting from the z-axis.
This blog is basically about Mothing and my life, in no particular order. Hope you enjoy reading it.
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