Trying times -- "back in the day"

Still no boat -- will I have to go back to the UK and put it in a windsurfer bag and bring it back personally? On the flip side, I did get a mention on the IMCA world home page about the new blog. Now if Doug could add a link to the bloggers list on the left hand margin (hint, hint) I'd be in the game. Still working on Andrew's theme of "informative and interesting," I'll add some more tidbits for all you out there in the moth-o-sphere.



Elaborating on my previous moths....in 1973 I built a plywood Stockholm Sprite. The job was so pitiful that when people saw the boat they inevitably asked, "What's that?" and I would reply, "It's my first try." So that became the name of the boat: 1st Try. I only have one photo of that boat, and it was published in the Daily Advance, the newspaper in Elizabeth City, NC (the "Home of the moth boat") as I was headed out to the annual regatta sponsored by the Pasquotank River Yacht Club. While the photo is grainy it does show the sleeve sail I used on my first three boats. My second moth was a Mistral, after I had read a page in the UK Yearbook that described the Mistral as a design suitable for helm weights of up to 14 stone (= 196 pounds or about 89 kg...by the way, why do the Brits sell gasoline by the liter but measure their highway speeds in miles per hour?) Since I was about 180 pounds and sailing against folks quite a bit lighter, I thought this hull shape would suit me well. This boat I named "Try Too" extending the "try" naming theme from my first boat. Again, photos are hard to come by but I found one that graced the cover of the IMCA-US newsletter in the spring of '76. What's going on? I was wading the boat out into water deep enough to fit the fixed rudder when the bow got away from me and the boat started to take off down wind. I think I managed to grab the starboard shroud but not in enough time. A photographer on shore just happened to catch the result (this was way before photoshop, and no, the picture wasn't staged...)





My third boat was built over the winter of '76/'77. It was a Magnum 2 from a mold taken off of John Claridge's boat that he used at the '76 worlds and I named this boat "Try-Umph." I'll try to come up with a photo of it, but the boat was sold at Hayling Island after the worlds so I didn't have to ship it home (boy, maybe I should gone that route this year!) So, naturally when last year I started building the foiler, my fourth international moth, I would continue with the "Try" theme, hence "Try-Foil." It's interesting, to me anyway, that a "trefoil" is a mathematical knot that can be analyzing in knot theory. I put a trefoil graphic on my foredeck and I hope I may get to see it again in the near future....