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Well what a day. I am still feeling a bit disappointed that my fins didn't go off today, and I had my concerns even before getting down to Sandy Point. But I was not prepared for my first run when I could barely make 37 knots. Then looking at the fin it was covered in fine weed, so clearly I was in for a disappointing day. Fortunately the conditions improved with the weed thinning out a bit (and I stayed off the bank) and managed to bulldoze my way down the course to a reasonable run of 42.6 on the GPS. This graph below shows my best run for the day, and clearly shows (as best a Foretrex can...) how my speeds would take off briefly once over 40, but then hit a wall and drop the speed before repeating the cycle again.
The only thing to really cheer me up was Andrew Daff who managed a major PB on one of my first TM45's ( V1). Super job. I spoke with him tonight and assured him I would have him doing 45 before the end of the year. That is not such a big ask, if he can do nearly 44 on this first fin. The fin I was using had the same foil shape but a different chord length to some of the proto's used in February, including the one Tony Wynhoven used briefly and did a couple of 42 knot runs in conditions where everyone's speeds had dropped. This is a very interesting scenario that I wanted to explore. I already knew that some conditions are not conducive to efficient flow around the foil, so having a foil that can still shine in these conditions is a very important development. They had proved to have some capability of going fast in choppy conditions, and in the fins I took on Thursday (V3's), they felt like they wanted to go. But just as they were hitting their sweet spot, they stalled and the speed would not go higher. This was in sych with a lifting from the tip of the fin which raised the rail of the board and made things very unsteady. I am hoping that simply more rake will stabilize the tip so the fin is free to really go hard. I'll also build a dedicated raked fin so that I can get through some of the weed that has developed at Sandy Point. I actually don't remember the weed being as bad as Thursday. And I believe it caused many spinouts on the day, with everyone suffering from spinout that I recall, with perhaps only Sam Parker not getting a major fall. The wind was quite squally on Thursday with the steady wind between the squalls around 20-25 earlier in the day and later rising to 25-30. But every 30 minute or so a big rain cloud would come through and the wind would go off to 50+ knots. I had setup my wind meter in a good section of the course about a third of the way down, in clean air. When I set it up it was reading around 20-40 just before a squall came through. I was trying to make my way back to the car-park before the rain but it hit me and I could barely stand up in that squall. Later I found the wind meter had failed and the max reading was saying 67 knots. I suspect that was the speed the magnets flew off the impeller so was a true recording. But Tim Daddo, who knows the conditions very well seemed to doubt it. He recorded only 40 something in a 1.5 hour period he was monitoring the wind. But I must say his monitoring was not during either of two major squalls that hit that day. Here's my trackpoints. Not many runs as I really felt I was wasting my time so didn't want to risk breaking anything for no good reason. |
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