Yesterday was a good day for mothing. After completing a 14 mile keelboat race it was time to take the moth out in a decent breeze. The winds were 15-20 and kind of puffy, but I was eager to get out on the water with my new mothing knowledge and see if I could make the more stable on the foils. After cranking on the vang and then cranking it on some more I finely got the boat feeling good. I could go upwind and downwind without much trouble. Then the problems began. After bearing away in a big gust and heading downwind with a lot of pace I did my first high-speed nosedive with a full ejection from the boat. After swimming back to the boat and righting it again I tried to take off, but something was weird. The nose of the boat would launch out of the water but the stern wasn't lifting at all. After a few tries I checked the rudder foil and my suspicions were verified... the rudder foil was completely GONE. Apparently the nosedive had created enough force on the foil to completely strip the attachment bolt from the foil.
I tried to sail back to where I lost the foil knowing that it would float, but finding a black foil in rough water would be an almost impossible. Thankfully my parents where in the area on their Laser 28 and I flagged them down and told them to help me look for the foil. I knew that it was a long shot, but it was worth at least trying. I made a few passes but it was clear that mounting any meaningful search from the moth was almost pointless. Sailing without the benefit of the pitch control from the rudder was hard enough. I sailed dejectedly back to the marina pondering where I was going to get a new rudder foil. As I got back to the docks my parents were just pulling into their slip. I sailed by and my mother reached down and lifted up one fully intact black Bladerider rudder foil plucked from the water just downwind of where I crashed. OMG lucky! Thanks Mom & Dad!
But it turned out this was all very lucky indeed. When I got back to the dock and started pulling the boat from the water I noticed that the spreader attachment had pulled completely free from the mast. So had I not come in I would have risked completely loosing the rig.
So now it’s back to the shop to fix and improve these parts. My only big question now is how to best fix the rudder foil so it can’t come off ever again. The two choices as I see it is to embed a stainless nut into the rudder and then bolt on as before. The second option is to permanently fiberglass the foil onto the rudder. The bolt is nice because I can remove the foil for transport, but at the end of the day maybe the permanent attachment would be more secure and stiffer? What do you think?
