Looking ahead

What did we learn from the 2008 CST International Moth World Championships?

The CST International Moth World and European Championships have now come to a close delivering two brand new champions. Unfortunately, the regatta was dramatically affected by 30 knot winds that battered Weymouth for most of the week leaving the event a two day affair.

In spite of the weather, it is clear the fleet is happy: John Harris (AUS, below) is a deserving Champion and, had the racing run longer would still, in all likelihood, have taken the title. Although a two day championship is far from ideal, the requisite minimum number of races took place to crown a new champion.

Even though the event was very short there are some fairly obvious trends in the fleet.

Australia was, by a significant margin, the quickest nation out on the water. Impressively four of the top five sailors were from Australia without a single Brit present at the front. To some extent this will be put down to the Australians always being quick in big winds, as these tend to be their predominant conditions day in day out down under. However, to say this is the reason they are so dominant is to do the Aussie Moth sailors a great disservice.



This is the second year in a row they have turned up to the World Championships more prepared than the rest of the world. In particular they seem to place a much higher value on using training partners and groups than many other nations and this has shown in their results. Adam May commented to TheDailySail that: “The Brits just are not spending the time sailing together at the moment. Looking back at last year Rohan [Veal] and Amac [Andrew MacDougal] both spent a lot of time training together and this year John Harris and Scott [Babbage] did the same.” It is pretty easy to see this is the case with Harris winning the Worlds, Babbage taking fifth and Amac in second, having been the leader after the first day. By way of contrast two sailors who were predicted to be very fast, but who had both run very individual campaigns were Simon Payne and American Bora Gulari. They ended up in eighth and 20th respectively.

It has also become evident that weight is not everything. Many lighter sailors spoke about struggling in the big breeze due to their light weight; however, Australian Matt Belcher is about as light as they come, hovering around the mid 60kg mark and finished third overall.

This brings us onto the second big point from the event, which is exactly the same as last year when the fleet returned from Lake Garda: In the foiling Moth everything is about control and control systems. At the end of the 2007 World Championships everyone agreed the Bladerider team had done an awesome job in refining their foiling system, making the boat easier to sail. This year it is clear they are still ahead of the game in this area. Many of those we spoke to who had watched some racing – be it from a boat or onshore – were clear that the top guys were able to push the Bladerider significantly harder downwind than the rest of the fleet.

In the Moth, sailing downwind in 20 knots of breeze is, to some extent, about being brave. On the reaches in particular you feel constantly on the very edge of control and this can be more than a little worrying. The top teams were definitely pushing harder on these legs while much of the fleet were backing off. Although this is all about holding your nerve, the more confidence you have in your control systems the harder you feel you can push and the faster you will go. The surprise European Champion, Arnaud Psarofaghis, showed the rest of the fleet exactly how it was done and dominated downwind in his Bladerider, having earlier in the week picked up the $1000 prize as winner of the Velocitek Speed Trials

There may well be those who still do not like the Bladerider, but it is impossible to deny the production foiler Moth on two particular points. Firstly, in the windier conditions Bladerider sailors can push harder and so go faster than the rest. The top four boats at the Worlds were Bladeriders, the World and European Champions sail Bladeriders, even the top Brit was a Bladerider sailor (Alex Knight, who surprised everyone with a very impressive series for which he should be applauded). With eight boats in the top ten it is clear there is still a way to go to catch up with their performance. It is also notable the top non-Bladerider sailor, Scott Babbage in his Prowler Zero, had spent significant time ‘pimping’ his control system set-up.

Also evident at the World Championships was that Bladerider has sold a lot of boats. We do not have the exact figures for how many competitors at the regatta were sailing in Bladeriders, however, even the most cursory glance around the dinghy park showed around half the fleet, give or take, consisted of their boats. However, although many manufacturers have been slow to catch up, many will be significantly upping their production in coming months. Most notably of course Fastacraft, who will, in the next few years, be able to turn out something approaching 100 Moths per year.

The above fact about Fastacraft was revealed mid-week in a designers’ briefing which proved to be very illuminating (see the details here). The most notable thing we felt to come from this was that some manufacturers are now looking to sell a range of boats to the fleet. We feel there is one obvious reason for this. The top few in the Moth fleet want to buy boats that are as fast as possible and to some extent will pay whatever money they can to get one. Because of this, the price of these boats is going to be high (over £12,000 in all likelihood). With most Moth sailors not having the means or the inclination to spend that much on an 11ft boat, the solution has been to bring out lower performance, lower cost Moths. It will be interesting to see what effect this might have on the fleet, though predictions at this stage are rather pointless.


Above: Bora Gulari in the Firbreglass Bladerider FX

Finally we move onto something we feel must be remedied which is the wind band in which the Moths sail in. Principally, as a development class with no limit on the number of sails used in an event, there should not be a situation where the class does not go sailing for the best part of a week. Adam May cut down a sail for Katherine Knight to use and tested it himself. He said it worked fine and when sailing in breeze just felt like a Moth in five knots less wind. If this is the case, surely the class could have been racing all last week?

There is one issue with this concept. If the fleet is to be encouraged to have a smaller sail it must be evident it will race irrelevant of the wind strength. If a sailor had turned up last week with a small sail it would have been pointless as the fleet did not launch in anything over 25 knots. We feel there needs to be a change to the class’ Championship guidelines that say racing will take place in anything up to 30 knots, and it needs to be made clear to event organisers this is because the boats have smaller rigs available.

There may well be those that argue having a smaller rig will add expense onto the class and this is undeniably true. However, at the moment many of the top Moth sailors are using a full sail and a flat sail at Championships so it makes little difference to the top end. Further down the fleet it will add expense, but not a great deal: It is very easy to cut down an old sail for big winds when you buy a new one and also use an old mast. A full mast and sail package is around the £1500 mark, so realistically that is the maximum we are talking about for all sailors to initiate this. Personally we feel if the class wants to continue to show itself as the media darling of the sailing world it is imperative we go out racing unless the conditions are so windy it is clear nothing could go out on the water.

It was decided at this year’s AGM the next World Championships will be held in the Gorge, USA next year, which is famous as a windy venue. By then we should be seeing the first new Bladeriders and large scale production Prowlers. Hopefully the control systems will be more even and the fleet will race for a whole week, irrespective of the weather. Already the Brits are looking at organising some proper regular training with a few coaches being talked to. However, as the new European Champion would attest, the event is now so much more than an Australia/Britain battle and it will be great to see this continue as the fleet heads for the first US Worlds in many, many years.