Today was another good day for mothing. After dorking around in some light winds this morning the winds came up to a good 20-25 and Mothball One was put through her paces. For the most part the boat was handling the conditions pretty well and I went out several time and worked on upwind and downwind handling. Gybing still totally eludes me. Everything was feeling really good, until everything came apart. On a good fast reach back towards the marina I heard a loud crack and was instantly in the water. It was pretty clear what had happened. The rear rack arm had completely failed. Thankfully I was at the mouth of the marina and I was able to drift/swim back to the dock. Somehow in the process of the crash I broke the rudder off too. I'm not sure if it was breaking before the crash or if I landed on the rudder foil when the rack broke.
Sometimes I wonder why I don't get discouraged when Mothball One breaks, which it has many times. But at the end of the day I think its all part of the process. You can't push the limits without experiencing a few failures. But every time you take off and fly on a boat that you made, the fact of failures don't seem so bad, at least that's what I'm telling myself :)
6 comments:
Do you have a wire on the aft corner of the racks that keeps the corners from splaying apart? It looks like there's no sign of a wire like that.
Keep up the good work!
Do most boats have a wire like that? That would probably help. My plan was to just re-enforce the crap out of it.
Ok, I officially feel stupid. I had no idea I was supposed to have a wire connecting the ends of my racks. Makes sense though. I guess I'll still re-enforce the crap out of it, but I'll also a wire.
Yes, a wire is mandatory as far as I know. A guy bought a bladerider and forgot to put the wire on and did the same thing but with even more damage.
Reinforcing it like crap will help.
I did get really lucky in that everything broke at joints so the repair should be pretty minimal. Should be back on the water by the weekend, plus it will be nice not having the alarming amount of bending in the racks when I move towards the back.
i forgot that wire once too, same thing happened. looks like you fared better than me - there was quite a bit of damage. good luck with the reinforcing.
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