Monday, November 9, 2009

Foil Setup


After listening to the latest mothcast I decided to check my main foil angle of attack. I made a template of the foil section and drew the chord line and lines at 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 degrees. It slips over the tip of the foil. I added some thickness to the trailing edge and did a really quick and dirty job of fairing the thickness into the flap. I've got it in pdf and dwg formats, so if anyone wants it I'm happy to email it to them. It plots on a letter sized sheet. I used a laser level to get the boat level and then shot it on the template. Wow, my foil was at not much more than 1/4 of a degree! That explains a little why I had to hike off the back of the wingbar and was sailing around in full flap down mode. I guess I was a little less than accurate in drilling the hole for my main foil and/or set it up at the wrong angle. I thought I was doing the right thing by putting the daggerboard at 7 degrees of forward rake, but apparently not. Needless to say, the boat sails a lot better now.

I didn't realize people would be so interested in the photo of Karl's boat. My attitude is that the more people that see your stuff the better, and I hope that everyone takes another look at the bowsprit concept. It's definitely on my list of stuff to do once I figure out how to keep the boat upright. The funny thing is that the bowsprit is possibly the least radical part of Karl's setup.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Flashes of Brilliance

A lot has happened since my last post.

I competed in my first moth regatta. It went about as well as I expected. Had some good moments, including rounding the top mark in second with a pretty big gap between me and the guys behind me (that ended when my vang blew up on the downwind.), and also had plenty of mechanical issues. The second gantry is holding up well so far, it does everything it's supposed to and hasn't self destructed yet. Richard won, and Paul came in a close second after driving all the way down from Santa Cruz. Karl's boat showed some impressive speed at times as well, I'm excited to see the further development of the tilt-a-whirl. Here's some pictures:

In other news, Chinchillazilla#2 was launched. Bobby worked almost non stop to get it done after getting back from South Africa. There wasn't much wind for the launch, but it floated, which is good. Richard took some pics:
The boat looks great!

Next up is the Turkey Day regatta in a couple of weekends. Should be great and we're hoping to get some of the mothies from San Diego to come up.