Boom of Doom

Some wind today in Long Beach made for interesting test piloting on the new incidence control program:


San Pedro Bay is a decent place to sail in these conditions as there are a couple of long breakwaters. But the end of the channel is somewhat unprotected, has a fair bit of tide sweeping past it, and can be a real handful if everything isn't going according to program.

My plan was pretty straightforward. First, get thrown out of the protected harbor by the cops for speeding. Take a deep breath, sail outside to end of channel where I know it is blowing reasonably hard, find some protected water to play around in, and hope the boat behaves itself. Richard said be careful if you go outside, showing me his 27.9 kt GPS max, so I didn't take it lightly. Would have much preferred to bomb around inside frankly, as per my normal sort-the-crazy-ass-new-foilsystem routine. But I digress.

Thankfully the boat decided to behave, mostly. The new gizmos have pretty much taken care of the wand loading issue, and it is cool to zip along with less load out there. Need to trim the ski way down, and add a bit more gain, but no matter. May still be hanging up a bit on starboard tack, but nothing the air grinder and a bit of carbon won't take care of.

Capsized next to the Lifeguard boat in the lee of the oil island to adjust the wand linkage. They came over to check, and asked the fateful question: "So you're not going to need any assistance at all then?" I wanted to give my pat answer, which is that none of us has a crystal ball, thereby warding off evil spirits with circumspection. Clearly this would have been a better answer than "No", in retrospect!

Headed in as it was getting late. Foiling low to avoid surprises in the substantial lumpiness between the oil island and the end of the channel jetty, my practically new, sailed three times, heavy-duty-so-you-won't-have-to-worry-about-it boom decided to fold in half at the vang. Death roll, fiddle around with alternate sheeting systems off the back rack, get cold and a bit seasick from all the lumpiness. Finally realizing there was no way to sheet effectively and get upwind to the beach, or downwind through the worse water between me and where I needed to go, or in fact anywhere at all except drift up on the jetty itself, I waved the Big Red Boat over.

The BRB is not a RIB, but a 35ft twin diesel screw fire boat that will fit a capsized moth quite comfortably on the aft deck, provided the rig is removed. Which mine wasn't. Bringing me to the day's main lesson: if it is pseudo-nuking and you are sailing in lumpy water when you lose the boom, take the mast down right away and get the sail off, because you aren't sailing home and it isn't going to be any easier to do it with a huge red fire boat standing by after you have developed a case of mild hypothermia.

I'm probably tempting fate by saying it, but the things I expect to break, like all the dodgy parts and contraptions I make in the garage, don't seem to break. Similarly, the original Prowler stuff doesn't seem to break, unless it gets broken onshore or trailering. But anything I pay retail money for in the name of "improvement", like new masts and booms, is doomed!

Not sure I like the filament wound spars at all; I think the next boom will be a nice rolled bit of autoclaved prepreg - like the first boom that lasted me four years and has yet to cash it in. I have enough on without fretting over the possibility of random spar failures.

The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

Why do so many multiple World Champions seem to get grumpy and leave Mothing? Boredom perhaps. Or maybe it's that they hate losing so much they can't stomach the fact that someone may come up with something on the design side that no amount of good sailing can overcome.

The pop psychologist in me attibutes this phenomenon to the fact that it must take a hell of a lot of effort to win a Worlds, and even more to win multiple times. So the thought of losing on the design side, rather than the sailing side, starts to seem like an unreasonable chance to take, and even more so if you are involved with building or selling a particular design.

It brings me back to the Fall of 2001, when I had some cash and looked at buying a Hungry Tiger from Mark Thorpe. We chatted back and forth a bit, but then 9/11 happened and it got put on the back burner. I do however recall it seemed obvious to both of us that two foils on the midline was the most likely way forward. He clearly saw the light at the end of the tunnel...and decided it was a freight train.

I wasn't privy to much of the discussion surrounding the adoption of hydrofoils, but there was a lot of discussion back and forth about whether to allow them - for the usual reasons: expense, practicality, decimating the fleet by putting it out of reach of mere mortals, etc. We all know where that led: foilers everywhere, but no more Hungry Tigers (apart from Scott's). The dominant class boatbuilder and three time World Champ, who even beat a foiling Rohan with a lowrider Hungry Tiger in Les Sable d'Olonne, decided he wasn't playing the foiling game. I have to give him credit for going out on a high note.

Rohan then went on to win in 2005 and 2007, affiliated with Bladerider in the latter event. Again not privy to any details, but the end of that story was basically that Bladerider was outclassed on the design side, and is no more. You'd think someone like Rohan would just move on to a Mach 2 and keep sailing, right? But after all that went on, and being so immersed in Mothing for so long, one can hardly blame him for wanting to do something else. Another boat and another multiple World champ sidelined by better hardware.

Fast forward to 2010 and history seems to be repeating itself: a multiple World champ is marketing the dominant boat, and yet another round of technical development threatens to knock it, and the Champ, off their perch. Having witnessed the rise and fall of Rohan on mainly technical grounds, and Thorpe before him, the best stragegery (to quote our 42nd President) for a sitting Champ and manufacturer rep is apparently to make it as hard for anything faster to get to the starting line as possible. Which is relatively easy to do when you sit on the Class Executive Committee.

Thusfar, we've seen the class Constitution invoked against the class rule, basically arguing that the first rule defining the class violates its own Constitution. This seems like kind of a scorched earth approach to winning, but whatever. Not entirely convincing in any event. This argument having failed, the discussion has shifted to Rule 4.2, and the responsibility of the measurer to report  "anything which he may consider to be unusual or to depart from the intended nature of the boat, or to be against the general interest of the class." The Rule states further that "a certificate may be refused, even if the specific requirements of the class are satisfied." Unfortunately, the decision regarding whether to refuse a Certificate to a wing hinges upon a tricky, somewhat subjective judgment by the Exec: Are wings against the general interest of the class?

Suffice it to say the positions of interested parties are predictable on this point: boat manufacturers feel that wings are against the general interest of the class, pretty much, and the people building wings obviously feel that they are squarely within the general Class interest. Both factions have vested interests in the outcome. Which is, well, interesting, as the very next Rule, 4.3, quite presciently states the following:


A measurer shall not measure a boat, spars or equipment owned, designed or built by themselves, or in which they are an interested party or have a vested interest.

So, if I follow the news properly, measurers are banned from measuring equipment they have an interest in, but Exec members are allowed to rule on how the measurement rules should apply to equipment that THEY have a vested interest in suppressing or promoting? Perhaps the Class should pass a rule mandating Exec members recuse themselves from debates in which they have a vested interest.

Impressively, the Exec is off to a good start: Bora has been booted from the Exec on grounds of vested interest. But now that the precedent has been set, it hardly seems reasonable to allow manufacturer representatives with equally vested, but opposite interests to remain. Let the standard be applied uniformly.