The last couple of months have been quiet this end as I’ve been underground working on loads of new projects, some successful and others failed. The failed ones have dented my mothing mojo and had me in a spin which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s made me take stock of what was what and has actually helped me to get back on track.

As with all these things, every cloud has it’s silver lining and I now have a better understanding of the moth class and what it means to some and what it means to others. I also narrowly avoided becoming another moth statistic and can only thank some very good people who helped me to see the woods from the trees and ‘keep it real’..

I do still amaze myself with my naivety when it comes to people and I question whether I’m retarded sometimes!

Anyway, lessons learnt and the mojo has returned. Ninjario took pride of place at the London Dinghy exhibition on the moth stand this year as the ‘homebuild’ example next to Ricky Tagg’s brand new Mach2. I’m hoping people got to see her beneath all the marketing material that had amassed on her over the weekend!

The boat looked pretty impressive after a spot of 3M boat cleaner, especially after a full season of hard racing in strong winds. There is nothing that needs doing apart from replacing the footstraps with some non stretch ones and changing all of the ropes (which were second hand when I put her together but somehow got overlooked during the season!)

Talking of changing ropes, I’ve gone soft and gone to 4:1 on the mainsheet as I’ll be moving the main further toward the front on the boom. Oh at some point I’ll be building a new gantry with some new tubing coming in from overseas which promises to be uber strong yet light. (the current one is a whopping 9cm under length.)

I spent sunday catching up with a few faces, some old and some new and it looks like this year is going to be another great one for mothing in the UK as we build up to Stokes Bay Nationals in July. Hats off to Simon Reynolds for putting together what has to be an unprecedented sponsorship package for the UK moth class. By the sounds of it, this is going to be the ‘summer of love’ for the moths here!

Ninjario is now sitting on the driveway getting ready for a few weekends of training before the first event at Queen Marys on the 26th of March.

Oh and apart from the ridiculous workload at the moment (no I’m not complaining this time!) I’ve got orders for 22 wands for Mach 2′s, Ninjas and Bladeriders! Crazy but fun…