Your boat in a museum?

One of my first madmothist posts, written exactly six years ago today as I was waiting for Try-Foil to be returned from Weymouth, was about the history of the Moth class and included a reference to the Mariner's Museum, which is only 45 minute from my house. After a short blurb in Scuttlebutt about an AC72 J-board being given to the Museum, I sent an e-mail to the Lyles Forbes, the chief curator. My note and his response are copied below.

So, there's an opportunity for someone's boat to gain international respect and be saved for posterity. Are there any unused boats about?

I see from the latest issue of Scuttlebutt that the Museum will be

getting a AC foil to add to the small boat collection. I'm a local 

(Norfolk) moth sailor and am familiar with the Museum and the 

small boat gallery. You may be aware that moths are also foiling 

now (and have been for ~10 years.)  Maybe the acquisition of a

foiling moth would be a nice comparison to the Silver Spray that

you now have.

Joe Bousquet

Lyles Forbes <lforbes@marinersmuseum.org>	Jul 29 (1 day ago)
to me

Dear Joe,

Thanks for your e mails this morning!  We do indeed

have the J-foil from the AC72 as well as a T-foil 

rudder from an AC45 now in the collection. Hopefully

we will be able to get them on display very soon – we

are trying to design a mount to support the foils.

As to your mention regarding the Moth class, 

absolutely I have been aware of their foiling 

capabilities for several years! The evolution of the 

current design from that of Silver Spray is really 

amazing. Although I think we ultimately would like

to have a foiling Moth for the collection, at the 

moment we are really out of room to display any 

more boats. We recently were given a large dhow from

Kenya, that has overtaken the area that my volunteers

used to conserve our collection.

However, if you become aware of a foiling Moth that

someone is interested in donating, I will certainly 

present that to our collections committee for 

discussion; as well as with our exhibition designer to

see if there is some way of displaying the boat in the 

Center.

Thanks again for contacting us, and hopefully you will

soon be able to view the Oracle foils in the 

International Small Craft Center!

Best regards,

Lyles Forbes

CHIEF CURATOR

The blog is dead

Congrats to Nathan on the win. I wish I was there. Lots of stories to be told, I'm sure (for example, what happened to Dylan???) but the medium had undergone a sea change.

As witnessed by the most recent blogroll on the International Moth home page, the blogging among mothists is just about dead. Hmmmm....no posts about the worlds....what's up with that?

On the other hand, the Facebook page for the worlds has had lots of action. I suppose Facebook is a social blog, but I'm afraid the concept of individual blogging has past its prime.

The twitterverse has adequately covered the event on its site but I think the best overview came for the Yachts and Yachting coverage, even if it did neglect most of the fleet (70 of the 140 entries were in the silver fleet and it was a while before any mention of the back half was made.....)

I thought the Beau Outteridge Production pieces were okay, but their sailor profiles left a lot to be desired when compared to the extended interviews from Motterfeiber back in 2009.

So where do I go from here? Next week Susan and I will attempt to get her flying in Aftermath down on the Chowan River in North Carolina. I hope to race the boat at this year's classic moth nationals in September.

Stay tuned for occasional reports.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

Happy Independence Day. In CONGRESS, July 4th, 1776...

As of today, Americans still only account for 3/131 entries. I wish I were one of them. Good luck to Dylan, Zach and Brad.

Concerning the decision to put the kibosh on efficient solid wings: I'm pretty sure it was made in the interest of keeping the class members happy for the near term (and, yes, because we are a class with a "una-rig" to use an old term) but that a collateral effect was to move the moth off the bleeding edge of development. 

I'm looking forward to reading about the championships, now only 2 weeks off.