(Photo – copyright oceanimages)

Having had a few days to reflect on Parkstone I realise that my dream of successfully building a moth in my garage has been fulfilled so what does this mean for the class as a whole? Probably not a lot on the face of it, but on the other hand, I hope that the Ninjaville blog has helped to refuel the possibility of building a competitive moth for many.

I know that down in Oz, Mr. Bruce Lee (AKA Dave Lister) took the Alpha Gilmour to new home build levels by kicking many a production boat’s ass so there is definately scope there. Here in the UK I saw one other homebuild at Parkstone “Mad Max” built by one Richard Edwards and using Ninja foils. The guy was definately matching me on speed most of the time and it was only mistakes from either of us that separated us in the end. His design was completely different, using elements from the velociraptor with wide transom and curved bow.

So that makes two of us in the UK fleet. Now rumour has it that a couple more are in the pipeline having spoken to a few of the seasoned sailors. Our current moth godfather Captain Cooke is paving the way by assisting anyone that needs it to build their own boats so it seems that the Ninja design will be the basis of many a new and fast weapon of choice for those wishing to create their own piece of heaven.

Things have definately moved on even in the two short years that I have been in the class and there is no excuse for poor craftsmanship or broken boats in light of the amount of information that is readily available to anyone with a computer and internet connection.

Thanks to people like Mike Cooke, Graham Eeles and Kevin Ellway, who are willing to give up their time and knowledge in return for not a lot, your average carbon enthusiast can deliver a professionally finished boat in to the fleet as long as they absorb the knowledge and put it to good use. (It also helps to either have a really understanding wife or be single!)

It is a very fluid time for the moth class as a lot of the science is a lot more understood now which can only lead to another push forward in terms of performance over the next few years. I found out at the weekend that at one point (just when foils were introduced to the class) there was pretty much only five active moth sailors in the UK! That was only in 2004 and now 6 years later the class is up to around 60 mostly active members and growing all the time.

Mike is knocking out more Ninjas than he can count and there are more and more Black boats (Mach 2s) turning up at clubs than ever imagined.

One final thing I noticed was that on the 2nd hand for sale site, there are less than 1/2 a dozen moths for sale in the UK which leads me to think that many boats are now being kept, possibly modernised and hopefully raced soon.