Fly me to the moon

Its hard when you are flat out at work and your new baby sits in the garage. The willpower it takes to ignore it until the day is done is immense, it's as hard as climbing a wall that is leaning towards you, or as hard as kissing a woman who's leaning away from you actually.
Anyway here she is and tonight I will be burning the midnight oil to see if I can make the weekend. We'll see, but last night the boat went together very well. The only drama was that I managed to cycle over the wand (don't ask) although not half as funny as Andrew who managed to drive over his Pro Start (doubly don't ask)
My boat is a standard Mach 2 albeit with some comfy non standard toe straps, which optimistically I've moved out a couple of inches more. Oh and I've mounted an outboard on the stern.
Silver Abarth graphics go on next week.
S

Travamunde! Warmer and Cheaper!

I hinted that I would like to see an event where sailors were put first. An event where there was so much to do that it became a welcome break from the computer, indeed an event where "Log On" referred to adding wood to the BBQ, a "Mail server" was actually the bloke at the pub who brings out the lunch, and "Off Line" was what happened when your wet sailing kit snapped the clothes peg.

Well it seems that the folks at IMCA Germany have the same philosophy and from what I now know about the "Nordea Moth European Championships 2011" there will be so much to do that there will simply be no need to walk around, in a Bora-esque fashion, with a Macbook Pro clamped to your ear.

So let's get down to it.

How about an entry fee of only 200 Euro's? Not bad eh? Especially not bad when everything else is largely free. No paying extra for your pizza to be cut up here boys.. Read on..

Saturday starts with a "Dash for Cash" which is near the shore and in front of an estimated 4000-8000 spectators who watch you from amongst the food and drink stalls situated at the viewing area. Oh and the prize money? 1500 Euro's shared unequally between the first three.

Later, in the specially designated "Moth Hanger" (a place where you can get breakfast every morning) there is a welcoming party for the Moth sailors.

We have the practice race to deal with on Sunday, and then in the evening we are off to another (again free) official opening party with beer and food. .

Monday through to Friday see's three races a day. Good to finish on a Friday actually, but let's not concern ourselves too much with the racing, we have our own course, and a race officer who sails an International 14 and knows what he's doing, and that's good enough for me.

Monday night is the opening ceremony on a square rigger moored in Travamunde, and then on Tuesday Manfred Schreiber's company "CTM" will sponsor the evenings entertainment. On Wednesday there is a pasta party....

In fact every evening there is a social event ending with Fridays prize giving dinner, and with great sponsors, that means there will be 3-4000 Euro's worth of prizes up for grabs (including a KA sail)

The Moths will be located on the east side of Travamunde which is a bit out of the way of the rest of the event, we have our own area which is great for launching. There are good showers and if you want to camp then it's only 400 metres from the boats.

Here is the link to the website. Download the brochure under "Invitation" (oh you may want to click on English first ;)

http://www.imoth.de/euro2011/

It's the Nordea European Championships and it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun!

Now, I understand a great social programme doesn't define an event in itself, it is a European Championship after all and people will try hard. I do realise Olympic sailors can't drink, and accordingly to those dedicated full timers the above might not mean much, but dont worry you are not forgotten! I will go and buy several copies of "My Life in Accountancy" to keep you entertained at night!

Anyway I better start practising, and with a few days to go until the new boat arrives this means I will be in the pub by five!

S

Galilee

The Sydney Opera house isn't, I'm told, very good for Opera. But who cares? It's still one hell of an occasion to go there, eight jumbo jets can sit wing tip to wing tip on the site, and the place is so legendary that it has even had it's own opera written about it.

(Eighth Wonder)

The Sydney Opera house is therefore a perfect example of the occasion being the most important thing, not the perfection.

And we should think about that as a class as we strive for the purest way to decide who is the World Champion to the exclusion of anything else.. We can't control nature and so we cannot be certain about what will happen. Dreadfully dull Weymouth was a good example of that, as was Switzerland where you lost your image rights and all feeling in your hands within 20 minutes of arrival, and at the same time so was Belmont where 10 percent less main foil really just meant ten percent less weed.

The Mothfest however already has 40 entrants and there you don't have to race at all! I think that's wonderful and a signal for all who are in the unpleasant position of having to organise a Championship to take note of. If I'm honest the only really competitive event I'm looking forward to is the 2012 World Championships in Lake Garda. Sure we have the Europeans in the meantime, and I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, but last time I was at Travamunde my tent blew away and a small hurricane destroyed a caravan park.. No, Garda it is.

And to the purists who say that we must have 20 knots every day largely to cater for the ever increasing girth of the average moth sailor, or perfect GPS laid windward marks, which mean you spend so much time waiting for the race officer to move it 5 metres to the left, then to the right, then to the left...that you are buggered before the race starts. An irrelevance when you can't see the fuckin thing anyway.

Perhaps therefore we should think differently and I recognise this is a possibility only realisable if the class pays for a resource who can take this on.

And if we had that, would it, do you think, be possible for us to approach a venue like say The Bitter End Yacht Club and take the whole circus there? Do we really need a Yacht Club to sail from? Oh and 19 races? Do we really need that? Even the most blindly enthusiastic puppy like Moth sailors in Belmont must have been thinking 'Oh for fucks sake, not again..'

The only vocational race course I can think of, where someone else long before us rose above the water, would be the sea of Galilee. Now that would be cool.

Just a thought, My thought on a cold day where I'd dearly like to be somewhere nice .

Here you go Joe!

Yeah I know the "1" has to come off too ;-/