An update for anyone interested in the original post. I will freely admit that Rohan Veal did win the Australian National Moth Titles and congradulations to him.
Rohan competed in the Moth World Titles held at Les Sables d’Olonne France, in the same boat as he had won the Nationals in. Rohan finished third beaten by the Thorpe brother’s who took out first and second. This win was the third in five years for Mark Thorpe. Rohan Veal sat on the beach deciding whether to use the foils on the moth or not. I quote"Using the hydrofoils at the championships proved to be a gamble each day, depending on weather conditions. Before any race it could be perfect foiling conditions. But an hour late, the wind could easily drop off to nothing and the drag created by the large wings underwater, when the boat was not foiling, negated there advantage". Quote from Australian Sailing November 2003.
RESULTS
1 Mark Thorpe (Australia) 1-1-1-2-5-1-2-1-4-1,10 points
2 Les Thorpe (Australia) 4-2-2-3-18-3-3-3-6-5, 25 points
3 Rohan Veal (Australia) dsq-3-4-1-15-2-1-2-1-12,26 points
Note there was no U.S. boat in the top ten placings.
OK - if you like the topic of foils or not, you GOTTA watch these videos of the Australian Nationals. My apologies if these have been posted here already.
Channel 7 News Queensland - 2 January 2004
Channel 7 News Queensland - 5 January 2003
IMCA Australia Nationals Highlight
In short: “holy carp!”.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be mentioned that another Moth on foils placed 6th (beaten by 4 non-foiled boats).
The Other Matt
SEE VIDEOS POSTED BY MATT WHITE
IN THE PREVIOUS POST!!!
Just want to correct a possble false impression: a quick reading of Peters post just before this one could lead one to conclude that the French Worlds occurred after Rohan had won the Nationals; it actually occured BEFORE.
Rohans performance in France was so impressive that it received a page in Seahorse magazine-the digest of world sailboat racing and prompted certain elements within the Moth class to attempt to ban foils from the class altogether though they were(and are) legal under the class rules. Those individuals were soundly defeated. And Rohans trully historic(first time in history a foil borne boat won a development class Nationals) victory in the Aussie Nationals sealed their fate.
Even though the Moth can take off in 7knots of wind there is still the matter of 0-7 to contend with. In variable conditions a foiler has to make the decision before the race whether to use foils or not. One of the tremendous benefits of Rohans performnce and the subsequent defeat of motions to ban foils is that now a lot of developmet work will be addressing how to make a foiler more “all-round”-perhaps using a retractable main foil. Development of hydrofoil systems will now be integral to the Moth class and we should expect surprises and great refinement. John Ilett who built Rohans boat and foils told me that he expects to see a Moth on foils at 30 knots before too long!
Doug Lord
–High Technology Sailing/Racing
Doug
You may be interested to know that on a show called Totally Wind on Channel Ten over here today they did a report on Rohan Veal. They showed some good up close sailing of the moth. I’m sure that if you can get a hold of it you would be very interested. I watched it and although the winds were light it didn’t impress me. You on the other hand who has a very big interest in this sort of thing would probably be. I saw him crashing down and stopping very quickly, capsizing and generally for the conditions having a hell of a time and working really hard to get the thing to work properly.
Peter
Thanks, Peter.I’d love to see the video. I have some footage sent me by John Ilett builder of the boat-20 min of continuos sailing in 15-18k -never a crash. Rohan has the thing down pretty good- at least he did during the Nationals winning 8 straight races…
I appreciate the heads up.
Doug Lord
–High Technology Sailing/Racing