Two Boat testing on the Schlei

Again it has been a Sunday out of the "picturebook" out here in the North of Germany on the Schleifjord. Like already last Sunday, I went out with the Moth and I had a wing man, necessary due to the cold water. Read about the "missing" wing man on : Doug´s Blog. Last weekend I had very good session with Andreas, who is only in his second week of mothing and as a true top notch sailor he was already pulling some foiling jibes whilst I am still stumbling. Racing with Andreas on simple windward leeward courses in flat water was great fun.

Yesterday I had to pull the boat apart to install a new mast stump. The Acetal part (white plastic) had been completely worn out. This happened due to the metal pin slowly moving into the mast foot though it has a thread. I had fixed that a little late., the thread slowly grinding itself into the black plastic foot. As usual when heavy into boat work a few more jobs appeared which I tackled until midnight. Today in beautiful sunshine, 14°C and a good breeze from the east, I have sailed with Ole from Denmark who is playing about my level. He recently bought a BR Moth from GB. We had some good racing together in our first session at around noon. After a break, some drinks and an apple, the wind had increased to a handy 4-5 Bft. with whitecaps nearly all over the place. I was not able to pull some proper maneuvers in the breeze and we both went swimming a couple times. I think it was due to fatigue. Nevertheless we rounded the marks, waited for each other and blasted downwind with abt. 20kn until we "slow jibed" or swam. Ole was able to pull a few really good jibes. I even digged my mast top into the mud once but nothing broke, just a bit of the "black stuff" on the deck after righting the boat. We packed it in after an hour and had a nice BBQ, coffee and cake and the boats, sails and drysuits dried out completely in the sun. A good and promising season start these last two Sundays.

By the way, I get loads of spam mails masked as comments to one of my older blog entries: "Two Boat testing in the Fehmarnsund". Want to see if it has to do with the wording and does also happen with this entry or if it is something else. Does anybody has an answer to these spam comments which is a bit nerve-racking? Fotos taken by Kerstin with a longs lense. Do not get fooled. This stretch of water is wider than it appears.