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.