Niki just received his boat which now makes three moth in Europe in total. While I am still waiting for mine you can enjoy this video I found on Niki’s blog.

It has been a while since I last blogged. This is due to the fact that not much sailing has been going on. After my breakage at Garda I was looking forward to the moth training at lake Neusiedel with Niki and Doug, but that didn’t happen as Assassin wasn’t capable of delivering a boat to any of us. So I stayed in Berlin.

The next event was the regatta at the Schlei that Fred organized (after I pushed him to do so). You can find an article about it on Fred’s blog.  Unfortunately I received a call on Thursday that our dog had to be put to sleep. As my parents were not there I drove down to Olpe to take over this task. After 14 years of a good life it was time to say goodbye to Kaja. Here is a picture of her and me I just found again:

Thus I missed the last regatta of the season. It is time for winter now which means lots of wind and hopefully no ice on the water.

The other notable thing that could have happened is the delivery of my Assassin. Unfortunately that didn’t take place yet either. I expected the boat on time for Garda in the middle of September. Since then I have gotten numerous delivery dates but still the boat hasn’t been shipped.

As there is basically no communication going on I can just guess when the boat will arrive. Maybe I can put it under the tree for Christmas (2010?). The guys who know me are aware of my level of patience – it doesn’t exist. I feel reminded of the old Bladerider days when customers waited for 12 month for their boats

If you want some advice: if you are impatient get a Mach2, if you want to have a great boat that is very innovative and state of the art wait for an Assassin (maybe bridge the time till the Assassin arrives with a Mach2 !?)

Fortunately I stuck to the advice Adam May has given me in Kiel 2008:

With boats is the same as it is with women: never get rid of the old one until the new one is ready. I haven’t put my BR on the market yet and that makes waiting just a tiny bit easier.

After a shipping nightmare ( 2 weeks stop over in London) my Holroyd rudder finally arrived. British Airways screwed up badly and Embassy freight promised me to never use them again.

My first thought when I got the package was that Holly must enjoy packing things up. The rudder was packaged very artistically like you can see here:

Like you can see the Holroyd rudder is actually one piece and it looks amazing. Devin already had a chance to sail with his as his was probably not delivered by BA. Here is what he thinks about it:
“6-8 knot of wind.  The rudder is amazing and so much stiffer the first jib I almost tossed myself off the boat. It takes about half the rudder movement.  I had a 18.3 ten second average and 19 knot top speed in maybe 8 knot of wind max.  It was light enough that I had trouble getting up on the foils, but was ripping once I was up. …  So I was ripping along at 18 knots with a 1 meter roster tail going behind the boat.  The rudder really is perfect.  Plus the work I did on the
main foil and control system, the  boat feels like a completely different boat. Looking forward to trying to tomorrow in some more breeze.  Nothing broke so I am really happy with how everything feels on the boat at the moment.”

I am packing up for Garda and cannot wait to try the new rudder there…

In addition to the new rudder something else happened: I picked up the new shirts I made to promote the Assassin and foilermoth.com. They were printed using screenprint and are really high quality. Here are a couple pictures of it:

Here you can see Cassian (our awesome designer who deserves all credit for studdex and foilermoth) trying on the first shirt:

If you want to have a shirt for yourself they cost € 25 (+ shipping when you don’t live in Germany). Just email me to felix@foilermoth.com

As promised I wanted to show you the pictures of Harald’s mould. Besides Doug Harald is the only one still building his own boats. Harald complained to me that he has got too much work to do and thus doesn’t progress as fast as he would like. It is a real shame the so called recession hasn’t hit the Bodensee yet.

Anyhow, here are the pics:

I think the transom is really interesting as Harald has chosen a narrow design again like we have seen on many boats before the foilers came along. However it is not as radical as the Mistress was…

Today I got news from the shipping company: my new Holroyd rudder for my BR will arrive on Saturday, exactly one day too late. (my colleague asked the ingenious question why shipments never arrive one day too EARLY?)

However I can still go to Kiel on Friday thanks to Manfred who offered me his spare rudder. Thank you Manfred! I love this class and its sailors.

When I was in Zwischenahn Harald gave me a few files I want to share with you. Harald is an mothie veteran that returned to the class when he bought “All the way May” from Sven Cloppenburg(?) in 2006 (he returned when I had my first moth regatta, also at Zwischenahn). By now he has converted this boat to a foiler building his own foils. He doesn’t come out of the water early but he is surely fast once he does. Also he has to sit pretty far aft but see for yourself. Here is a video that was taken on the Bodensee, Harald’s native lake:

Take a close look to the rudder. It was actually built too light and thus bends like crazy. Here you can see it close-up

As you might have noted Jon Emonson has joined the ranks of foilermoth together with Niki. He has already been waiting more than 3 weeks now for his Assassin to arrive but somehow the shipping company screwed everything up. He will start posting once he has got something to post about (i.e. his Assassin).

Also this week Phil made me really proud as he changed his site http://www.mothflyers.co.uk/ because he liked our foilermoth site so much. When I looked at his new site I found two videos I really needed to show you.

The first one is probably the most exciting moth racing video ever (due to the comments and the quality) and shows Nathan and Bora chasing each other at the worlds. Like I said I stole got this one from Phil:

And here is the other video I have stolen borrowed from Phil. I shows Cookie doing foiling gybes and is really educational (you know I love education, don’t you?)

I am waiting for my Holroyd rudder for my BR now. it should arrive next week just before the German Nationals. Here is a pic titled black gold…

As I lost my rudder there hasn’t been anything happening on the water. I didn’t go to Kühlungborn but attended the 50 year anniversary of my Yacht Club, met a lot of folks and drank a bit too much and had loads of fun.

In the meantime however we have done some modifications to foilermoth. First of all we changed my blog from foilermoth.blogspot.com to www.foilermoth.com/blog as I wanted to integrate it into foilermoth entirely. I think the result looks nice but the problem is that everyone lost their rss feeds. Please update them (top right corner).

The second change we’ve made is opening up foilermoth.com to other mothies. Niki became the official reseller for Austria for the Assassin and thus we decided to share the site. You will soon see some blog posts from him as well as from Jon Emonson. You can now also find Niki’s contact details here.

We also tweaked the site a bit and  changed the blogroll and made it a lot faster so you can finally enjoy using it. If you want to see your blog here too, please contact me.

After some requests we have also added the foilermoth.com artwork to the side for download. If you want any of it you can have it here.

Also the worlds have produced some nice pictures that we will upload soon as well.

Last week I had a lot of fun following the worlds. The level of professionalism the class has achieved boat wise and sailor wise is just unbelievable. And once again I realized that the Americans just know how to do a good event. The coverage on the web (photos, twitter, blogposts) etc were awesome and the sponsors they got were impressive. The worlds were just run like a business and I think it was to everyones benefit.

I myself also had a lot of fun sailing last week as Alex (the guy from Dubai) also put his BR on Stienitzsee for the weekend and we could go out in perfect conditions with two boats. As I usually don’t have a sailing partner it was quite a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately I had a little accident on Sunday that caused me to lose my rudder:

I was foiling near the shoreline when a canoe came out of the bushes. All I could do was an emergency gibe followed by an emergency capsize. When I righted the boat I didn’t think of anything bad until I grabbed the tiller extension and didn’t feel anything. Then I realized that my whole rudder (vertical and horizontal) was gone. First we rescued the boat and towed me back in and then we searched for the rudder for 2.5h and didn’t find it. I never wanna have a black rudder again ;-(

My insurance is not yet sure if they are going to pay for it as they only pay for stuff that is connected tightly with the boat (a moth rudder definitely is in my opinion). However in my opinion the BR rudder is just too expensive so I ordered a Holroyd foil from Darran and Holly yesterday. It should be here before the German nationals.

Unfortunately it won’t be here for the regatta in Kühlungsborn and thus I decided to fly to cologne tomorrow to attend the 50year celebration of our sailing club and see my parents again (it has been 4 month).

I hope everyone going to Kühlungborn is having a great regatta, See you all in Kiel

I know everyone in the mothosphere is only looking towards the US at the moment. Unfortunately some of us Germans couldn’t be there and thus decided to go to Bad Zwischenahn for a weekend of fun.

Now that I am back on the road again thanks to the German department of transportation I picked up my boat on Thursday and planned to drive Thursday night to have a day of practice. Unfortunately I got an important business meeting set up for Thursday evening 7pm. By the time the meeting was over it was already 11pm and I decided to drive the 450km the next morning.

Being on the road again was fun. I really enjoy driving except for the people that don’t keep right and the dutch (sorry Koos). In addition I always turn up the music really loud and enjoy some drum’n'bass and some rock (see bottom of post for examples). As I like to go fast (I travel an average of around 160kmh with a moth on my car) I tie the boat with lots of tension belts (5+). This is how it looks like:

Anyhow I was the only one on Friday and after setting up my tent I went outside for a spin but only got onto foils once for 10m. It was still fun and when I went back on shore Sven just arrived and I had someone to chat to. Later Alex arrived with his uncle Frank and we had a nice evening.

The next day Harald and Manfred arrived so we were complete with 5 boats (4BR and one home built). The conditions for the first race where pretty poor but we decided to go ahead anyways with a complete lowriding race.

I screwed up my start as the ropes on my tramp ripped two minutes before start. I capsized the boat right away, took my spare rope that I always keep with me, fixed the issue and crossed the starting line a few minutes late. Harald, always really good lowriding was leading the field, tightly followed by Sven and Manfred while Alex was in fourth place. Unfortunately Harald went for the wrong buoy and thus lost his lead to Sven. My only goal was to catch up to Alex and I got closer and closer all the time. The race committee shortened the course so I had no time to lose. While Alex tried to get on foils and bore away I tried to go as high as possible. In the end I got into fourth place by about 10cm. No-one could tell who was first when crossing the line. I really got a kick out of chasing Alex.

The next race had some better conditions and I had a good start following Manfred foiling to the first buoy. On the broad reach I was chasing Alex once again and caught up to him quite fast. However I screwed up a bit, dropped down and couldn’t get up again. On the abaft course I got up on foils a few times and finally made my first foiling gybe without capsizing (I touched the water though). In the end I was in last place for this race, fourth was Harald, third was Alex, second Manfred and first Sven once again.

In the evening we used my iphone to check on the news about the world’s and were really impressed by Bora as he won both challenges. Really impressive. After something to eat and a few beer I joined the club’s summer party with Frank and had some fun.

Today started with an awesome breakfast at the club. Unfortunately there was no wind and we heard the stuff we always hear:
“you should have been here the day before the day before yesterday” and my favorite “usually it is not like this….”
Alex and I played some Frisbee and put together our tents before we finally decided not to race and packed our boats up. In the end I came in last, 4th was Alex, 3rd was Harald, 2nd Manfred and 1st Sven.

When prices were awarded the race committee made a promise to the mothies. If we come next year and if there is one single moth that hasn’t foiled during the regatta we will get a keg of beer. Hope we will find a lowrider willing to race for the event next year.

When we packed up the boats I realized once again that the moth is a development class. Everyone had a different way to transport the boat. Harald turns the whole boat upsite down and puts the wings on his car. He is always the fastest one, Manfred uses a trailer and is also really quick. Alex takes off the wingbars and puts everything in the car, Sven, the engineer he is, has special cut ropes, additional lights on the tramps and screws the trolley onto his roof racks – really sophisticated. I just use lots of ropes and straps, leave the frames on and head off.

Here are some pics of everyone but Sven (he escaped my iphone):

Alex and Frank

Manfred and Harald

and myself

All in all it was a nice event and I am really glad I went there to meet the folks and be at a regatta again. I decided to go to Kühlungsborn in 2 weeks and cannot wait. In the meantime I will be engaged in the worlds (it is called internet mothing) and wait for my Assassin to arrive.

Here are the promised examples of music I listen too when driving:

Kyuss – green machine

Chase Status – take me away

the observer all stars – rebel dance

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Yesterday I have received my driver’s license. It has been 7 awful weeks. It was the reason I didn’t go to the European’s and couldn’t go to Walchensee last weekend. Also I only sailed 2 times in the last 8 weeks. Sucks, doesn’t it?

But now I have to stop complaining. The Walchensee regatta seemed to be a big blast and there have been 12 entries in total. You can see the results here. I tried sailing last sunday (my brother had a day off and could drive me) but I think the picture explains what I did instead:

As I have missed this regatta I have signed up for Zwischenahn this weekend and I am really looking forward to my first moth regatta. However as it will only be the 3rd day of sailing in 2009 (4th when I count the Mach2 sail on Lochly’s boat) it is more about meeting the people and getting some practice.

There have also been some news about the Assassin. Jon Emonson will get his Assassin sometime next week and I have invited him to write about it on this blog. So you can expect more posts in the future.
My Assassin is due to be shipped beginning of September and I cannot wait. There will also be some Assassins at the world’s and I am really curious how they will perform.