First Sail

Finally!

Now that the boat is in the water I thought I'd start blogging. I've got some pictures of the construction which I'll post over the next month or so. My favorite moth blogs have pictures of boat setups and technical information, so I'll try to keep the content along those lines.

First, proof that the boat does in fact float:

This project started out last fall when one of my coworkers, Bobby, and I decided we wanted to build some boats. A-cats were great, but a little beyond our budget and space availability. Neither of us had built composite boats or sailed moths at all so we tried to keep the design as conservative as we could. To make a long story short, after lots of starts and stops, I finally launched my boat yesterday. Bobby's is going to have to wait a bit as he's headed to Cape Town for a few weeks on Thursday. The boat seems strong enough in the right places and actually foiled on the first tack away from the launch ramp after more than a few capsizes getting into the boat for the first time. The basic setup is:

-Home build hull

-Fastacraft main foil (old version)

-Fastacraft wand and control cable (Karl's stuff from his boat's former life as a garden variety prowler)

-Homebuild rudder (I think we went for about 110 in^2, I'll have to check)

-C-Tech rig

-North V6 sail.

Here I am heading out:

Had a great first sail in puffy and light stuff and was mostly focused on keeping the boat upright, but had a few low altitude flights. The day ended when one of the nicropresses on one of the shrouds I made in a hurry at West Marine gave out and the rig came down. Wasn't a big deal as I was in a small bay and there was no damage. The boat itself was great though, not a drop of water it it!

I owe a huge thanks to Karl for all of his help through out the project, he put up with what must have seemed like constant phone calls and requests to borrow things, as well as putting a lot of work in at the shop.

Lastly, here's a really short video of me crashing. This one was actually on purpose because I thought I saw the harbor patrol coming (I swear).