Deja vu, all over again.

It's about seven weeks til my next major regatta - the North American Championship in Harbor Springs, Michigan.... and I've sailed Try-Foil only four times since last October. Each time out I was in the "sea trials" mode of sail, break, repair, adjust, sail again. Boy, it seems that I'm always just rebuilding before the major races. Perhaps one day I can afford an all sorted M2 and just jump in and go.

The major change from last year is using a push rod instead of the morse cable for the wand. Below is a picture of the new front of the boat. I still need to repaint but that can hold off for awhile.

 I also replaced the top end adjustable system, replacing my sliding pin with several  incremental fixed pin locations. Yesterday I sailed for about 90 minutes in a nice 10-12 kt breeze and found the strut angle of 8.5 degrees to be just a bit too low. Tomorrow I'll try another degree of AoA and see if that helps. I'm trying to get more height (full flap up with the foil about 8 inches under the surface.) Below are some pics of the top of the well. The first is with no pin locater bolted in, the second with a 9.6 degree forward cant, and the third with a couple of the other pin locaters. The different pin locaters only take about five minutes to change out. I feel better doing this than trying to put a shim in the foil socket (after having my new foil socket collapse at the Gorge Worlds, I've decided to stay with a fixed t-joint for now...)

At any rate, school is finally out and I can sail almost every day until the regatta. The rigging/unrigging has gotten much smoother - yesterday it was less than 30 minutes from pulling into the parking lot to foiling off the beach. It still seems that most of the time is spent getting the rig together (probably 15-20 minutes just to assemble the mast, slide on the sail, fit the shrouds and spreaders, step the mast/sail, tighten the forestay, run the controls.) The fitting of the foils goes smoothly with the new top end adjustable system.

More posts and some more pics later...