heavencanwait

Last weekend I went to my very first moth regatta. Christian an I were hitting the road on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Bad Zwischenahn at 10 p.m. On Friday we took some time to set up the boat, went to the hardware store and did a litlle tinkering and hit the water at around 3 p.m. with Michi and Harald, both new to the class (again). The wind was quite good that day even though it looked like more than it actually was.
After sailing on the Biggesee it was quite some fun to actually work the wind in strong winds. As I hadn't much of a chance to train in stronger winds I capsized a lot (6 -9 times I guess :-)), especially when doing gybes. Koos is going to sail in the winter to and I am planing to visit him in the Nederlands to train with wind.

In the evening more and more mothies arrived and I was trying to keep up with all the names. Of course the biggest topic that evening (and throughout the weekend) was the moth itself - class development, boat development, plans and hopes, new, sometimes crazy ideas). I was glad to have read so many mothie blogs so I actually understood most of the discussions.



On Saturday the start was planned for 11 a.m., but as we had to water the boats one by one we arrived a little late at the starting line, so we started half an hour later. Very kind of the regatta administration.
The regatta was held in very light winds. I got along quite fine as these were the typical Biggesee conditions, but I felt sorry for the foilers and for myself, as I was eager to sail my lowrider in wind. Anyway, I had not so good of a start but made some good decisions on the first and second beat and didn't loose any places on broad reach and finished place ten.

Christian had a good start but lost his advantage and finished 20th.

After this race all further races were postponed and we hit the shore for some beer enjoying the afternoon sun (at least it wasn't raining when we already lacked wind)

Saturday evening we had the class association's meeting which was quite informal with lots of jokes being made.
Especially interesting was next year's regatta plan. There are a few trets coming up like a Dutch Championship in Bruinesse, Horsens in Denmark, Lake Garda, Bad Zwischenahn again and the best of all the Klassenmeisterschaft on the Kieler Woche in June. Peter is so kind to use his influence at the KYC to help this vison happening - just awesome.
Thus it looks like this summer will be quite buisy thinking of the three weeks of YCL's sailing courses which I am heavily involved in.

After too much of Koos lemon vodka we went to bed, as we were eager for some sailing (with wind this time) on Sunday.

Unfortunately this hope didn't come true. When we left shore the wind was nice and the foiler actually got to foil. It was an amazing site and now am more certain than ever to get a foiler as soon as possible.

When the 420ies had there start Carlo and Leo were foiling in lee of the starting line. I saw two 420 crews just looking at the foiling moths with there mouth open in awe. When the start shot was delivered they had to realize that they just missed there start - hopefully they will show up with their own moth at our regattas rather sooner than later...

The sailing wasn't spectacular that day. On the first reach the foilers could foil a little, but after the windward buoy the wind died. I finished the first race of the day as 12th boat right behind Carlo. The next race was a very short one from the starting line to the harbour. I finished this one 7th such getting an amazing 9th place - not bad for the first regatta and only 6 weeks of practice even if it was just due to the light wind conditions which took away the foiler's advantages. I even got a new T-Shirt sponsored by Fred ;-)



All three races where greatly finished first by Philipp who really earned this victory.



Koos put all the pics he's made on flickr - linky: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildetukker/sets/72157602422262349/