hey people,
Not many people know that i sell the fibreglass throat (white triangle thing) all ready to go at $75. and i can get a sock made up and i think thats about $70 ill chech with my sail maker. Aswell i can make you a bridle and forstay and spin pole

Regards matt

Where abouts are you located matt, i have the pole and stays all ready to go, but am interested in the sock and chute mouth.

Can't recall price. A quick email to AHPC and they will get you a quote including delivery. From memory the glass one was cheaper but as I sail sloop I thought it was better to go with the ring.

I race at RQYS most Saturdays, weather permitting (which it hasn't been this season). Come down anytime. It is fairly similar to the F18 setup and they generally race at Humpybong on the south side of Redcliffe which is closer to you.

hey,
Im in victoria on the mornington peninsula,I spoke to the sail maker the sock is $85, but if you want to post it i have no idea howmuch is would cost

Why is that? I wasn't aware of a reason to go either way depending on cat or sloop rig.

I've sailed Contender Nationals and Worlds at RQYS - not a pleasant experience
I'm sure it would be a lot more fun place to sail on a cat.

The sock is a bit lower because it is mounted on the pole hence there is a bit more room for the jib. I thought it was a valid reason at the time.

It is different on a cat to a mono, not sure if that makes it better. The chop is still awful with wind against tide. I've swamped a 125 upwind with a "rogue" wave and launched the mozzie off a wave upwind, leeward centreboard was well clear of the water! Infact I prefer winter season with lighter winds and less chop in Waterloo Bay. Last weekend was actually really good, 12-15 knots and building, fully powered up, flat water (for a change). We were hammering upwind with height and speed, the best we've had it going...until the second race start when the boom snapped...doh!

Yeah saturday the weather in moreton bay was good, to bad i was busy, had planned on taking my mossie down to humpybong to race on sunday, but the wind increased from saturday and it was too windy for their liking and racing was cancelled.

Bought most of the gear now for the spinnaker, from what i understand greg goodall is finishing up the spinnaker and i should recieve that shortly. I decided to go with the ronstan orbit smart ratchets, not sure how some people had trouble with them locking in manual mode, as they have a pretty much fool proof system of locking in automatic mode with a lock on both sides of the ratchet to hold it in automatic mode.

Bought most of the blocks, went with series 20 for most of them and a series 30 high load block for the halyard block that goes back to back with tack line block. Only block left i need is the one for the end of the spinnaker pole, i know alot of people use a sheave block, however the spinnaker pole i got a local aluminium supplier to make is far too thick at 3mm, in fact im definately considering getting another pole made, as it seems to be way too heavy, though it could be put to good use as a heavy weather pole, as its seems extremely strong. What thickness aluminium do most people use for the pole, id rather stay away from carbon fibre, as i dont feel the cost is worth the minor reduction in weight, and greg goodall advised me not to go with anything expensive as its an item that undergoes lots of stress and if it doesnt break within a year it should be replaced anyway, as it will be structurally weaker, which being an undergraduate aeronautical and space engineer i completely agree with, even the high military grade aeronautical aluminiums and carbon fibre composites we work with degrade noticeably within not to long a time period when subjected to even normal operating stress loads.
So anyway, wondering what type of block people would recommend i use, id prefer an external block, even with a thinner pole that could take a sheave block, what kind of attachment should the block use, i know ronstan have several types that i saw the other day, one was a connected to a normal half loop of metal, and had a spring around the connection which had free motion in most directions, another was a more complicated and solid looking metal setup that had a pin and ring holding the two connections together, this only had freedom of movement around the axis of the pin (side to side). How strong does the connection between the pole and the block that the spinnakers tack hits need to be, and how much freedom of movement does it need, not much freedom of motion, in fact none at all im guessing as is the case with a sheave block.

Cheers.
Michael.

Michael,
To answer a couple of your questions,
The Spinnaker pole and rig setup, Greg Goodall made up for me.
Without measuring the wall thickness of the pole I would guess 1.6mm
I don't have a block at the end of the pole we use a nylon block with a hole in the centre for the rope (Standard Goodall Fitting) not rivets required and it doesn’t pull out or jam
The other end of the pole the block is held with the pine that holds the pole onto the beam. This block is a 30mm Harkin high load block simply because I had one. You could use a standard 20mm Ronstan block in the same way.
Regards
Peter

Hey Ncik,

Just realised you are on a mossie as well.
If that's the case makes 3 of us in SE Qld, could be the start of a fleet.

I checked the register off the Vic Assoc. it has your sail # with hulls as broken but I guess that's not the case.

Perhaps you could send me contact details as I sail from Cleveland and we could catch up some time.

I will have my boat with kite up and going by end Jan.

Cheers, Drew

Sorry Drew, the mozzie hulls are in the tip, starboard one was irreparable and didn't want to risk it with the other one.

I built F16 hulls to fit the mozzie platform and rig I had with square-top main. The idea was to upgrade to full F16 spec in the future, which hasn't happened yet.

We have a kite rigged and it works well, certainly made up a lot of ground downwind.

We're not racing this weekend because the boom is broken (and just when we had it going really well!), but generally race every Saturday out of RQ. I wasn't aware there were cats out of Cleveland, how is the launching?

I raced at humpybong last weekend and when i told them i was planning on putting a spinnaker on my wooden mossie they all gave me worried looks and recommended against it after what happened with ur mossie nick, but from what i understand from reading on here you broken your hull on the upwind leg, what do you think was the actual cause? Also i know theres a thread on timber mossies with spinnakers, but is there anything other than using a higher bridle to reduce the risk of damaging/breaking hulls while running a kite? Is there anyway to re-enforce the hulls? Are timber boats built for sloop rigged generally better able to handle loads for a kite compared to boats built solely for cat rigged? and if so why is that?

Also i believe my boat was built by Ben Cutmore, Ben if this is the case, whats your oppinion on the structural construction of my boat in regards to handling a kite, from what i understand putting a kite on it was always your intention as im sure ive read somewhere, and from what danny (the previous owner) told me, it was you who drilled the holes for the kite pole stays in the front of the bows (thanks for that as well, saved me having to do it).

Hey Michel,
I diddent actually build the boat just re painted.
From what I saw it was built to be sailed sloop and I think it is a heavy weight boat. so I think it would be solid.
I glassed in some alloy tube in the bows for later.
Hope its all going well.
Cheers Ben

There are very few Mosquitoes that were built to be solely used cat rigged. "Red Alert" is the only one I've come across. If you put a sloop bridle on one of these boats you will probably break the bow off. They have been built very light in the bows so they dont have much strength against being pulled in toward each other.

Having said that even Red Alert survived having a spinnaker added.

I believe the loads on the bows of a cat rigged boat with a spinnaker are not as large as those on a standard sloop.

If your boat has a high bridle then, if you have any doubts, it's best to leave it that way and suspend the pole and chute below it. Rather than change to a sloop bridle.

Any old timber boat needs to be watched for rippling on the inside face of the hulls near the front beam. That's the warning you get that the ply is losing it's strength and is about to collapse.

Tim,

Am interested in yours and others comments as I am about to put kite on my 'new' mossie #1635.
It was previously Wildtoy and NSWmozzie and is rigged for sloop but the discussion makes me give thought to the hull strengths. Any idea on who built it / it's origins?
Out of all the cats in Vic that carry kites how many are ply? are most the newer kevlar hulls etc?

Hey Ncik,

Shame about the mossie hulls.
Cleveland has quite a fleet of cats racing every Sunday - Nacra 5.0, 16sq, 5.8, Hobie 16, Windrush and soon my mossie.
There is a good ramp access and plenty of helping hands on race days.

Cheers,

Thats good to hear, as ive had her out in 20+ knotts of wind rigged as sloop rigged 2 up with a big total crew weight (190 kg) through chop with the rig setup tight to test what she could take and she held up well (we actually broke a few rivets on the centre fore/aft beam when tacking as we both had all out weight on it at the same time when we crossed over, turned out some of the rivets werent stainless marine rivets, fixed that in a hurry).

So from that im feeling more confident that she can handle a kite, at least in the winds im currently game enough to try flying it in, 10knts and under, for now anyway....

Also Drew, id love to come down to cleveland after you get you mossie and have a race down there with you, having only raced against nacra's taipains maris etc its hard to gauge how well im sailing my mossie without another mossie to match it against, plus its fun to race with boats of the same class. Hopefully we can kick some of those nacras, taipan, A Class sailors of their high horses and at the very least keep them looking nervously over their shoulders.

Jurassic Carp, Fat Bomber, The Tiger and Red Alert are all ply boats with spinnakers. There may be others I've forgotten.

There are no guarantees. Bows break off old ply boats sometimes (like Nick's) without needing a spinnaker to help them. If the boat seems solid and the ply does not flex (or worse, "squish") when you give it a push then it should be ok.

If you break it with a spinnaker then it probably would have broken anyway.

Yeah, hadn't used a kite on the mozzie when we broke the bow off. Upwind generally creates the greatest stress at the main beam (estimates of roughly a tonne of side force off the bridle). To get more stress at the beam from the kite generally requires high winds and high angles, which we've found to be slow with the kite.

Like Tim said, the inside had a small "ripple" just under the beam which I repaired about 6 months previously, but obviously not properly.

i hate to tell you that the tiger is not ply, its double kevla glass

Sorry about that. Not sure why I thought it was ply!

Also I forgot Peter Cobden's boat "First Try" which was a timber sloop with spinnaker (before he got his new boat).

Tim & others,

Thanks for feedback & info.
Will have a bit of a look see at hull construction just to put mind at ease.
I know Cameron rebuilt the decks on 'Blue Tongue' so he should be able to give some internal details from hulls.

It sounds like higher stress comes beating to windward anyway, my friend broke his cat on a tight shy reach two up going flat strap.

Food for thought may be to use a front bar similar to a Nacra 5.8 to change the load directions and limit the pull inwards. This would have to go through the class association but would allow timber hulls to continue, and the ability for people to still build their own while competing with full sail compliment.

May just go easy on the rig at first to 'test' before really going for it.

Cheers,