Square top

Well i managed to get out for a good blast with the new mainsail. It is pretty flat but seems to work well with my stiffer mast. I have made a bolt rope mast about 30% stiffer fore and aft and got Andrew Landenberger to make the sail to suit. It was about 20 knots easing to 15 later, it was very easy to keep in the groove and felt like i had plenty of height up wind.

Reports from the shore said the leech looked fine. Couple of minor tweaks to make but am happy so far. Will possibly go stiffer again.

Thanks for making a great sail Landy, you can find his sails at http://www.landenberger-sailing.com/

By the way it is very light at 2.4kgs

New Mainsail Test

Well i managed to get one of my little projects on the water today. Its a new sail from Andrew Landenberger, "Square top" in profile and on a new mast section with a bolt rope. Masts are now so small i thought it would be interesting to try the bolt rope sail and compare. I did not over rotate it today, but its on the cards.

The mast is significantly stiffer fore and aft and have applied a bit of our 18 footer technology to this development. The sail is light, with a total weight of 2.4kgs ready to sail, have not weighed my pocket luff yet, but rumours have it they are over 4kgs, I will weight it next week and report the facts.

I thought that the overall weight would be less, will report next time. I will get it out on the water a few more times and report on the results, very happy with the first outing though.

10 knot video

Well i finally got some editing software going. I have not had a great deal of sucess, but here is the first video. Bit on the crap side, but will get better with practise. The camera took about hour of footage, had afew issues cutting, editing and combining pieces again, anyway here is a short outtake.
Broke the mainsheet bridle as you can see.

Westerly Woe's

Well i managed to get out for a brief sail yesterday. About 1 hour in 25knot westerly is not good whether is on the harbour or the bay. I managed to forget my GPS but there were some smoking rides, sometimes feeling like i was just a passenger on the green rocket ship.

Well the setting that i was raving about a couple of days before in 10 knots was pretty much usless in 25 knots. The boat was lifting too high, so guess i need more gantry tilt to give the back end lift.

Pretty amazing in that breeze, i think i could have cut off about 1m off the top of my sail and still been fine. Water was very flat and managed to complete 2 gybes from 2, not that well but complete and did about 20 tacks, again not all of them famous but managed to have no swims in 1 hours outing.

Looking forward to lining up against someone to get some relative speed/height comparisons.

Still trying to edit video footage, having some drama with software.

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the delay between blogs, but i have already received a "blog wrap on the knuckles" from Luka and Bruce for creating a blog then not blogging. Now that a number of our big christmas projects are out the door at CST i am sure i will have more time to blog as well as find time to sail my boat. It has spent more time in the shed lately than i would prefer.

I managed to get out for a sail yesterday on the tail end of the southerly. Unfortunately by the time i actually got out there it was only about 10 knots. After haveing a very quick look at the boat last week and advising luka of the symptoms my boat was suffering i cut my wand down by about 80mm.

The first 30minutes was extremely random, sometimes not able to foil other times popping out, the wand was actually flicking forward at some point. Very frustrating!!!!

As i decided to call it quits and head in after 45min i approached the shore and realised that my control linkage was no longer connected. I quickly reconnnected and gave it another stab.

Well, i take back all those things i called Luka in the last 45minutes and change it back to genius. It was so nice to foil again with minimal adjustment, rudder was in neutral position and was quite easy to control height even by slight body weight adjustments.

Thanks Luka.

Back in September i bought myself a small digital camera with waterproof case and only had the chance to try it for the first time yesterday. Couple of easy stick on mounts, fish eye lens about 3-4minutes attaching and i was away. With a 2GB card it can take about 1 hour of video footage and can be mounted on a number of positions on the boat.

Very interesting, especially when your really, really, really unfit.

I will edit out the really boring stuff and post the footage tommorrow. Just have to figure out how to edit the footage.

Will try to get out for another sail this week.

Olympic dreams

Well highlight of the week was Mal com Page dropping in with his beijing olyimpic sailing gold medal. We have all dreamed of it and unfortunately for most of us this will be as close as any of us get. I have met Malcolm before and even after his gold medal he is still a really down to earth guy. Everyone in the factory met him and got to check out the medal. It was a really great feeling to see that he could make his dream come true. Alot of committment, 11 years of hard work, i am sure with alot of strain on family and friends, but great to see he has got great support to achieve his goal.

We suggested that he become the patron of the "CST Youth Program", a guy like this that has the drive and ambition could really help the youth of australia become even better sailors. Will let you know how the progress with the "CST Youth Program" goes shortly

good on you Pagie, well done we are all proud of you here in aus. Very, very, very admirable.

Short but enjoyable

Well i managed to get out in the strong gusty NW. Fighting some lack of boat work as well as an emerging migrane, I stepped my new "HM" mast and new "HM" boom, which was pretty quick and easy. I did fight with the cams to suit the mast, struggling to keep them on. Not really sure if this was technique or incorrect setup???

After a bit of mucking around in the water, i finally managed to keep them on and got up and foiling straight away. I was pretty pumped to see what these things could do in some breeze. I had a great first reach down the bay and with a little rudder tweaking found it to be a completely different feeling to the 18 in that breeze.

I think the flat water definately made it easy, but it was amazing to feel the green machine just continue to accelerate. Unfortunately i started to run out of water and had to turn around and go upwind.

Man i need some fitness work.

As i packed up my boat and drove home i can see how people get hooked on these machines.
My brain was buzzing with a million ideas on how to make it faster and less drag, now just have to find the hours to really get into it.