simple harmonic motion

so no results from the foil testing as yet because i cracked the bottom rudder gudgeon before the first race. sometimes when you say 'that probably wont be strong enough' its a bad idea to convince yourself that it will be. anyway its glued back together and tomorrow it will be beefed up and i should make it on the water later in the week.

The reason I loaded up the rudder and snapped the gudgeon was because of the annoying downwind motion the boat exhibits through our short chop. I drew a diagram to help myself understand what was going on- my theory is that the wave motion is wildly changing the angle of attack on the foil as it goes through the water. This can be up to around + - 5 degrees or more, depending on the boat speed and ride height. The boat tries to follow the wave- up the back and down the face - but there is a bit of lag because of Newton. The flap also complicates things a bit because it is reacting to the lag and not the wave.

The calcs suggest the best thing to do is go faster. The more waves per minute you go through, the less time F=ma has to crash the boat. But the faster you go, the greater the lift from that extra AOA and F becomes a bit more significant. also, there will be a sort of no go zone, where dead square is ok, beam reach is ok, and somewhere in between the effective wavelength gets in a problematic range and causes this kind of crap behavior. Probably people who can sail will be saying 'duh' but this has been hurting me for ages!

I still don't get why 2 boats with very similar setups will respond differently to this. Ncik said its all in the shock chord...

PDF here

more tinkering less sailing

I think the 'hours tinkering to hours sailing ratio' this year is about 278:6. Not doing my boat-handling any good at all. I've been thinking i should really just outsource the sailing part and focus all my energy on stuffing around in the shed. Anyway although I'm still not landing most of my maneuvers, my work with CNC and carbon is getting better and I've been busy applying the stuf I learnt building the moth to other products.

Anyway here are a few pics of my (almost) finished set of foils. They've been out a few times now and i think they could be on the pace. not that I can judge, of course, because no-one ever comes sailing with me! Thats probably my fault for having the boat in bits every time theres a race on and going out mainly on Tuesday mornings.. mm. The 3D model of the foils is available for download permanently on the right hand side of the page. Ill get back on here with an actual review when I've had a chance to line up against someone.

The top of this has become a bit of a mess. It functions, without any reference to form whatsoever. I like it.

I also chucked a set of spreaders together. So far they work. And they weighed in 300g lighter than my old ones.

Finally, has anyone got a carbon boom they want to sell? My alloy boom is nearly dead, (ugh, corrosion) and probably adds about a kilo or more onto the boat! Luka mentioned there may be Mach 2 owners who have upgraded to CST HM gear and have no use for their flexy Mach 2 boom. Anyway I reckon even the worst carbon boom will vastly improve my boat, so please let me know if you know of anything.

Right, now for some sailing.