The SA Mosquito National Champs took place from 24-27 Sept 2004 at Saldanha Bay, 100km north of Cape Town, South Africa. The venue is a sheltered bay with (mostly) ideal flat-water sailing in 15 knot winds at this time of year.
The first 2 days were quite strong, with wind at 25,4 knot average, gusts to 30 knots, and sailing was put on hold so as not to break too many boats in the first race.
After 2 days of waiting, the wind dropped to 20knots on Sunday morning, and the Race Officer put in 4 quick races before 12pm, in a steadily building breeze. With the minimum number of races to count having been held, and the wind increasing to 25knots, we all agreed to have another 2 races to spread the points out more evenly, since Kevin Webb had won all four races so far. Some of his closest rivals were having problems getting their new boats teething problems out of the way, or having equipment breakdowns. Others were doing capsize drills all over the bay.
Race 6 saw only 6 of the original 20 competitors get to the startline, and Kevin won this race even after losing his crew overboard, having to take the spinnaker down and go back to fetch her. I could have perhaps passed him at this stage, except that I put in a HUGE pitchpole with the kite up, and finished 4th. To my knowledge, Kevin & I were the only 2 boats flying the spinnaker in the last race, with 27 knots of wind and a very lumpy bay. Kevin won all 6 races in perhaps the easiest defense of his title.
Results :
1st : Kevin Webb & Claire McDonald
2nd : Danie & Gideon Snyman
3rd : Steve Mellet & Wilco Hall
4th : Peter & Beth Odendaal
5th : Sarel & Charmaine vd Merwe

So in the windstrength we sailed in, the title of this post makes perfect sense. I`d have hated to have 0,5sqm extra sail area in those conditions. 13sqm main, 3,7sqm jib, 13sqm spinnaker. It might not sound like much, but it was enough for Sunday.

When I get the pics, I`ll post them.

Cheers
Steve

Here are a few pics, for those interested. Our web-site http://mysite.mweb.co.za/residents/tuffex/index.htm has the full results & pics, for those REALLY interested.

Cheers
Steve

How do you post a few pics on one post ? I`m sure I`ve seen it done before.

pic #3

pic#4

pic#5

pic#6

pic#7

pic#8

pic#9. (last one - phew !)

Steve,

To get the images to display as part of the thread, do this :

1, Attache the images (as you have done) and complete your post
2, view your post and clich the attachement to get the name (http://www.catsailor.com/bb_files/39035-HPIM0352.jpg) is one of these (hi-light and copy)
3, edit your post, click the "image" button in the "instant UBB code" box below and paste the image and Volia :

[img]test to show the UBB[/img]

and the image :

Use multuple times this line in the body of the text :

[img]url[/img] = Puts the given url in an img src tag.

Example







All images must be on a web accesible homepage.

It could be that you must specify the full adress liek

http://www.mywebpage.com/picture1.jpg



Wouter

Hi Steve
Why is your main travelled out so far... Are you not concerned about the mast (looking at the stick in this pic)?

Hi Mark

In the Mozzies in that sort of breeze you really don't have much choice (bow buoyancy being limited). Pulling the main in will just make the boat go faster, and when you are already at "terminal velocity" that means the boat will just go downwards (glug...).

The mast usually seems to cope!

Tim

Hi Mark,
The only time I worry about my mast is when I look up, and it ain`t there anymore !
If you`re referring to the pink spinnaker boat, yeah I see what you mean, this sailor is easing his main & traveller quite a lot. Having said that he is one of the infamous top two sailors in our fleet, maybe he knows something ?
Most of us keep the mainsheet on, and play the traveller quite a bit. If we`re going very deep downwind we ease a lot of traveller, especially in light wind, or very heavy. If you look at the pic attached to this post, you`ll see what I mean. As long as the mainsheet is in quite tight, the traveller can be eased and the leech still acts as a backstay to a certain extent. An interesting point is that, since adding spinnakers, the only mast breakages I can recall have been sailing upwind, and the cause has been the same in two cases : the mast rotator device failed, causing the mast to over-rotate quickly with 2 sailors on the wire, and the masts broke just above the spreaders.
Our masts are about 9kg (extrusion only) so they`re not overbuilt by any standard.

Cheers
Steve

Hi all,
these pictures look like typical mossie sailing conditions on the Gippsland Lakes. Pop the kite and hang on and go where the kite takes you no heroics on trapeze just sail deeper,as Tim say's the hulls have reached top speed the only way to go faster is deeper and whatever you do keep both hulls in the water so you have the benefit of the bouyancy of both bows.
You don't have to worry about the mast just do whatever it takes to keep the boat upright, I have had the boat buried to the main beam with the main out and the mast survives.

Steve I generaly don't play the traveller as such just adjust the main to a moderatly twisted position, I have found to much main tension pushes the bows under so always go more twisted than is probably ideal and mainly play the kite. But of course I am short a pair of hands.

Great to see windy photo's on the forum. I know most of ours are always in calm conditions, hard to get people to take photos when boats are rocking and spray everywhere and they are rescuing boats or sailing themselves.

Keep them coming.
Regards Gary.