From what I’ve heard from the guys using the rigs in Hamilton Island with the AST, the boats are not as fast with the new rigs. Although they have found some ways of minimising the speed difference it seems to require little D1 tension and a busload of shroud tension. To cut a long story short, the rig will last longer but the enormous strain on the hulls means the boat life is compromised. It seems I was a little quick to jump the gun and assume that the new rig change would make the boats cheaper. Sure a $10K rig will last longer than the current/conventional rigs and thus a saving could be made. But the need to replace a +$25 hull every year pushes the prices up.

Once again we are seeing a failure to allow high perfromance sailing to be achieved in an Olympic class. Moth 2012 anyone?

Surely, if the 49er one day ceases to be an Olympic class it will become just as defunct as the Flying Dutchman or indeed the Tornado, where prices mean that noone wants to sail them.

It makes me wonder if boatbuilders understand the cost/demand ratio at all.

I’ve been asked to do a couple of Commodore’s Cup races out of RPAYC and I’ll be doing the Sydney-Coffs Harbour race in January.

I’m not really sure how I’ll go with the offshore racing. The sleep deprivation could be a problem but the 100% committment required to succeed in such races gives me a bit of incentive.

The only major issue is that the boat I’m sailing on is coming first on the yearly offshore racing results. The pressure is on.

The last time I got on the water was for the Port Stephens Winter in Paradise Regatta aboard none other than a Tasar. That was an interesting experience, but given that they go slow as all hell I don’t think I’ll be joining that campaign trail for a while (until I’m 75 at least).

I’ll blog when there is something interesting to say. Could be a while on that one.

Winter sailing at Woollahra starts in a couple of weeks and we’ve been sailing sporadically for about a month and a bit, so it will be good to get back into fleet racing again, albeit will be slightly cooler than the last time I sailed a 49er race; the worlds.

We’ve began preparation for the Nationals in Perth in Januray 2009, and I’ve begun to run through the logistics of getting the boat to and from Perth. Getting it there is relatively easy. Getting it back will be tougher and I’m likely to have to pack any container by myself as Mitch has to rush back to do the 16 nationals. Not looking forward to that.

It looks certain we will also be going to Lake Garda next year for the worlds. We’re pretty keen to go over there and give things a good go.

We’ve also been weighing up the rig options and we’re going to try and get the new carbon rig as early as possible. By as early as possible I mean as early as it is clear that there are no underlying faults in the rigs that are produced in the early batches. As such the topic of a new boat has come up. The aim is to have a new boat for Garda, although we’re currently holding out until our skills, finances and the changes to the rig and wings are finalised.

All in all things are going smoothly, but rather slowly but that is expected given that we are a new team and going through some teething stages; nothing time on the water can’t fix.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and buy a wetsuit top… I hate the cold but these things have to be done.

It’s actually a smart move, given that TASC is about 3 minutes drive from my house. Geography aside though, the prevailing winds in summer mean that Toronto is one of the best sailing locations in the world, and it would be negligent to ignore such a resource in my own backyard.

Now the first thing I notice about the 29er is that it is somewhat shorter than the 49er. It seemed that no matter how I far I got back in the boat I couldn’t get the bow to lift the way I can in the 49er. After a few nosedives we got the thing under control, yet it came after I basically broke my whole body.

Come 2pm we thought it was about time we did a race so we went and raced the MGs. We actually got a good start which was suprising because I really wasn’t paying attention to anything during the start sequence. We had an OK first work and rounded in front, with two of the MGs on our tail. We were a bit slower on the first reach (we were doing triangles!?) and dropped a place, but had a blinder on the second reach to round in first. Up the second work we sailed about as slow as a 90 year old women and dropped to third but got second back soon after rounding the top mark when the guys in front of us hit the piss hard. The rest of the race was about as eventful as Christmas in a Jewish household and we managed to come second; beaten by an MG.

Once again I have been reminded why I hate 29ers.

It has been a very long time since I wrote something on this site. I can’t honestly explain why I haven’t. I suppose I was a bit over everything after January.

My official regatta reports for SIRS, the Nationals and the Worlds are can be found at www.49er.asn.au …but here’s my personal version of things.

Nationals and SIRS

For the purpose of saving words I’ll talk about SIRS and Nationals together. Both were a great disappointment. It seemed that everyday the wind just got stronger and stronger, yet we kept going out and breaking stuff. I swear that for two weeks all I did was pay for stuff we’d broken that same day; all my hard work putting the boat together was rendered completely useless and this was not just frustrating but absolutely madening.

Now up until the States I believed that when the Worlds came about we would be ready and that we should improve about ten places. SIRS and Nationals confirmed that I was wrong. For so long we had been getting better and better and then the progress just stopped. Our boat had about 20% communication efficiency and my patience began to wear thin and so did the padding in my wallet.

In those two regattas it felt like I was sailing the boat by myself. Things were stagnant and the results were indicative of this. It was disappointing but inevitable. We were beaten by guys I knew that we should be beating.

Knowing that we were not going to go well at the Worlds was the right thing to recognise. So I decided to make the best of a bad situation and learn from sailing against the best in the World. The regatta became less about performance and more about taking in as much as I could. That was the goal anyway.

Worlds

The last few weeks before Melbourne I set about making my boat as similar to the top European guys as I could. The result was that when we got there the boat worked fantastically and the result was because of the two guys sailing it. There were times when we were going fast but a few disagreements and a month-long disharmony clouded decision making and boat trimming.

In the end I did have a good regatta. Until the worlds I really had no idea what it took to sail let alone win a major ISAF regatta. I think that now I fully appreciate what kind of competition I was up against and how sailing the boats frequently is so important. Watching the top teams interact and sail together made the inadequecies within my team even more evident to me.

As such the worlds marked the end of my second 49er partnership. It was just time to start again.

Now that the major regattas for the year are over it’s time to have a little R&R. I’m going to try and sail as much as possible and sort out a new crew.

Last year when I went to Italy I promised myself that if there was ever a 49er Worlds on Lake Garda that I would be there. I now have 18 months to prepare and improve before the 2009 Worlds to be held on Lake Garda. I honestly cannot wait and have already set about brainstorming how I will do the regatta. Personally I would like to do a couple of regattas, maybe Holland, Kiel and the Worlds but it is all dependent on time and money.

So, things may be quiet for a while as University takes hold again, but the cover won’t stay on the boat for long. With three ISAF graded events under my belt now I’m hungry for more international sailing. 2008 might look like a quite year but 2009 will be full throttle and there’s plenty of sailing to be done in the meantime.

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The last two weeks have been pretty hectic. Nationals and SIRS report coming soon with some photos from the nationals.

Mitch, Dad and I spent all of Saturday putting our good mast into working order, complete with a new set of shrouds and a new set of halyards. The rest of the time has been spent tuning the mast trying to work out our settings for the upcoming regattas. At this stage, the figures are still a bit all over the place, but we’ve figured out how to get what we want and we’re slowly getting there.

Tomorrow I’m either going to take the boat down to Sydney, or early on Friday morning.

It will be interesting to see what kind of weather we get for the series. Hopefully 10-15knt from the NE will prevail as it generally does and we can get on with a good series, provided we don’t make too many mistakes. As long as we don’t get any alphebet I’ll be a happy man.