Video (Finely)

It took a few more days than I was expected to get this video, but I think it looks pretty good :) The video was taken from a moving boat so it looks a bit slow.

That's Using Your Head

Mothball one is look'n pretty good, despite some minor injuries. My brother Jeff was jones'n to take the boat for a spin on Saturday evening in some pretty good breeze. Unfortunately his ambition did not quite match the conditions and after accidentally letting the cunningham completely free and not noticing, the boat became pretty uncontrollable in the 20kt breeze. After crashing several times in a row he ended his ride by falling backwards off of the racks and landing head-first on the hull. It was a pretty violent fall and he hit hard enough to put a pretty good crack in the hull. Thankfully he wasn't hurt and after making a few rig adjustments I was able to sail the boat back to marina and I even got it on video (check back tomorrow). After fixing the boat with some sail tape (see above) I sailed some more this afternoon in a pretty nice 8-10 kt breeze. Thanks to Valerie for the pic and movies!

Broken Butterfly

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 :)

I love teflon tape

Thanks everyone for replying to my last post about how to fix my rudder. The repairs have been completed and I'm pretty confident that its going to be quite solid now. I went to a longer and larger screw (1/4" x 2") and wrapped it with carbon uni and tapped it firmly into the hole. I did have some fear about epoxying this huge bolt into my rudder and just praying my release agent would work. I was also a bit concerned about making it so tight that it would be a huge pain to get it in and out again. Enter my trusty roll of teflon plumbers tape. One thin tight wrap of teflon tape around the bolt over the release agent and I was pretty certain the screw would come out relatively easily. I did take some time to force the tape tightly into the threads of the bolt and then wrapped it with carbon. The bolt was still quite snug unscrewing, but it came out smoothly and the threads look really good on the inside. I also use teflon tape on all of my screw connections and linkages for the wand connections. It just makes everything tighter and more solid while also ensuring that you'll be able to take it apart again. Its good stuff, you should have some in your toolbox too.

Bob's Lucky Day

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?

Back on the Water

The 2011 moth season has officially begun with a short but successful trip out onto the water. The boat worked great, the pilot not so much. But I didn't die or get hypothermia so I guess that's a good thing. Plus I got some pics! When I first headed out the wind was about perfect, probably 12kts and steady, good conditions for the first boating of the year. After getting things sorted a bit I headed out again but the wind was starting to come up more. By the time I turned around it was blowing pretty solid 20kts. I now know that I suck at reaching in 20kts. I had a really hard time getting the boat into a grove and I crashed to windward a lot. Thankfully Mothball 1 seems to have a good bow shape for going nose in. For as many times as she went in she never really felt like she was going to go down the mineshaft, even with the bow completely submerged to the mast.


I ended up in this position a lot. I could get up and going no problem and i was trying to keep the boat healed to windward, but I think I'm underestimating how much leverage you get with the boat when you are up on the foils. Clearly there was some wind out there though.


This is the only shot I got of actual foiling. Sorry for the blurry image, but I kind of like it. Its so blurry that its almost artsy. Anyway, the boat is clearly riding high, I could probably use more vang though. Man these sails need a lot of vang. A few rig mods to make now but I think Mothball 1 is going to have a very productive summer.

Bent Wand/Simple Ride Height Adjuster?

So I built my bent wand, it was quite simple. The main section is made of stiff carbon tube and bottom is a solid small diameter carbon round which is fairly flexible and fits inside the main tube. The lower section is set at about 50 deg off from main tube and has float made from a half section of larger carbon tube. When the boat is flying less than 10 cm above the water it will be controlled by the short main section and above that the 'bent' section will take control. Should work good I think. But I was playing with it and I came up with another cool feature than I could implement. Using the bent wand it would be easy to make a simple ride height adjuster. Simply attach a small diameter line the end of wand and then wrap it over the wand pivot and back to the cockpit. If you tighten this line the wand bends and effectively gets shorter. Simple. Will it work in the real world? I don't see why it wouldn't. Yes the tension on the line will have a small effect on wand pivot, but this effect could easily be compensated by adjusting the wand tensioner. No moving parts, nothing to get jammed, and very little added weight.