Now that we have some regular GPS action happening at St. George thought it would
be interesting to post a comparison of just how much faster Luka’s state of the
art prowler is compared to a Wombat 84 style skiff.

A the start, things are pretty much even when the gun goes, except that Luka is doing
more than twice my boat speed, before he even gets going. You pretty much feel like
you are not in gear when the gun goes off, and the fleet blasts away from you.

When Luka takes his first tack, he is already halfway up the first work, and I am
only just clearing the line parallel to the St. George sailing club. This graphically
shows the speed difference in a straight line drag race upwind.

At the windward mark, Luka now has a lead of half a leg.

By the time I reach the windward mark, the foilers are long gone. It looks like the
foilers haven’t pulled a bigger gap, but that is because I was running with the 5
knot run out tide and they were running against it. From this point on the only time
I see them again is when they pass me going the other way or put a lap on me.

This just goes to confirm that these foiler moths are awesome beasts, and my new boat
can’t come soon enough.

Original post by Bruce McLeod and software by Elliott Back

At St. George we have a phenomenon known as the “run out tide nor-easter”. This combines
the run out tide of the Georges River with the North East sea breeze and the windward
mark placed at the narrowest part of the river before it opens out in to Botany Bay. Combining
these elements produces some serious short steep chop. Yesterday’s tide was the
lowest I have seen at St. George.

These waves are a complete nightmare when foiling and all the boats had at
least one swim except Chris Dey. The fat boat however loves em! I took much peasure
rounding the top mark to see the foilers all struggling to keep out ot the
waves whilst I was trying to find the biggest ones !

In other news I am starting to show some serious signs of thin skiff withdrawl !

Original post by Bruce McLeod and software by Elliott Back

Now that I don’t have a boat, I am living off the generosity of my fellow mothies
at St. George, whilst waiting to start building my new boat. Once I sold my boat,
I instantly snapped up a second hand MSL11 from Grant Weymouth, that Scott Babbage
used to fininsh second at the 2005-6 Nationals.

Two races in with the MSL and I must say that I am VERY impressed. I’ll go on the
record and say that I am not a fan of Monofilm, even though it does look very cool,
but I am used to my sails lasting 20 years+. What I am most impressed with is the
amount of dynamic range that the sail has, even on an stiff thorpe mast, which it
is definatley not designed for.

So what boat am I using it on? An old Wombat 84 that weighs for or five times what
my old boat weighed. This is a really interesting experience in that when I last sailed
a fat skiff it was with a 10Kg goldspar mast.

So how does it compare with a modern narrow skiff. Well in roll, it is heaps easier
to sail, I almost managed to find the perfect positon to be able to lie down when
sailing off the breeze. Where the narrow skiffs excel however is in pitch. With such
a wide stern, the fat skiffs don’t handle chop any where near as well as the new boats,
and you need to spend most of your time up the back of the boat.

One thingh though, when they do go bow down, you can just keep driving them, because
with all the volume of the flares you know it is going to just pop back up again,
even if the foredeck is completely under the water.

So how is the performance? Well I carried a GPS data logger on the weekend, and hit
a top speed of 10.35knots, with a best 100 meter average of 8.35 knots. The overall
stats for the race was an average speed of 5.48 knots, for 9.725km, in
57 minutes. Low n’ slow baby, low n’ slow !

Original post by Bruce McLeod and software by Elliott Back