Ride Your Bike

Markla and I have been doing a fair bit of mountain biking as fitness for the mothing. This weekend we're hitting the road though for a 100km charity ride from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. The forecast is fantastic, 20 knots on the nose and rain...yippee...sigh :(
And it's freakin' magpie season! How did I get talked into this?

It seems I haven't commented on the wing sail yet. What little I've seen looks like a very good implementation. Still a bit nervous/dubious about its durability but that can only be proven one way or the other over time. I hope it holds together and is a successful new addition to moth development because I can't wait to start building one...although still want to work on the transportability issue.

SLINO is back together with a couple of mods...nothing that hasn't been implemented by others previously though; a Lister lever (of some description) and a tension linkage system. We felt the tension system was easier to implement and trouble shoot than the pushrod, especially with temperamental foils. The main foil got a coat of paint and a fine wet and dry so is looking considerably better than before. If the Lister level doesn't "Chernobyl", the rudder hinge will be locked off and faired to reduce drag, maybe even get a bit of a shortening of the span. There were some annoying issues with the pocket luff material of the North sail, but that has been given a work over by the local sail maker. Also trying to get the rig right, we felt the mast was not bending correctly so have played with the spreaders, they're a fair bit closer to the mach2 geometry now.

And who is NZL 3315? It appears you've gotten a slightly out-of-place photo on the interwebs...

http://www.surtees.co.nz/home.aspx
(Not associated with this company, just found it randomly.)