Third straight day blown away at Moth Worlds
At the venue for the 2012 Olympics the CST Composites 2008 Moth World Championships has been cancelled for the third day running due to too much wind with gusts between 20 and 32 knots continuing. In contrast to the expected conditions in Qingdao for the 2008 Olympic sailing events - Weymouth, the 2012 Olympic venue has suffered continues gales, beaching the Moth competitors for three days.
'Pre-event tuning for 2008 Moth World Championships - Weymouth UK - sadly this is NOT happening now'
© Fotoboat.com
Sailors are now getting disappointed after four days(including Practice day) now of not being able to get on the water, and the forecast for tomorrow is not looking good. The race committee is more hopeful for Thursday and Friday, however, the number of races for the championship is rapidly diminishing.
At the sailor's briefing at 9.30am, the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy race committee indicated that the sailing instructions have been amended to reduce the number of qualifying races to four with one drop. However, with the end of the race period closing in fast, they will be more willing to send sailors out in the upper limits of the wind spectrum of 25 knots.
With many hours being spent sitting around the boat park waiting over the last few days a favourite pastime of Moth Sailors is checking out each others boats and innovations.
One of the leaders in current thinking of how to make the foiling Moth faster is Adam May (GBR)
Adam has been sailing foiling Moths for about four years and is the current secretary of the International Moth Class Association. He joined the class after finishing sixth in his Olympic campaign in the Tornado in Sydney 2000, then missing selection for Athens in 2004, he jumped to the foiling moths.
His resume includes designing a number of moths over the years, the latest being the Velociraptor, with each of his four different designs competing at this regatta.
'Apart from the exhilaration of sailing these boats, I really enjoy the camaraderie of the people involved. Competitors willingly share and discuss ideas about design, boat settings, and moth sailing in general. There are very few other boats I'd want to be involved in, and I plan on attending numerous Moth World Championships because after two 3rds I'd like to think I can better that result, and have many more years in the class considering there are some inspirational older class members still foiling around at over twice my age'.
by Alexandra Harris/ Sail-World 
sunrise beach, QLD
