Outteridge thinks Moths can go a lot faster

Australian Sailing - March 2011

The editor talks with Nathan Outteridge about the recent Moth Worlds and where the class is heading.

Twice world 49er champion Nathan Outteridge sums up the appeal of the Moth: “It’s light, fast, and a challenge to sail. It goes double the speed of other boats, and you get to race against a whole lot of really top guys.”

For these and a whole lot of other reasons, the 2011 Zhik Moth Worlds at Lake Macquarie in NSW created an almost unparalleled buzz of excitement among the performance racing set in Australia and around the world.

When we arrived at the venue in January, more than 100 of these strange-looking craft were scattered across the rigging areas in front of the Belmont 16ft Skiff Club, as sailors of all ages and all shapes and sizes tinkered with their rigs and the peculiar little foils that make the class unique.

One by one they entered the water, wallowed for a moment in the shallows, then lifted up like a praying mantis and skated across the surface towards the start line on the western shore of the lake.

It didn’t take long for the top 10 to sort themselves out. Outteridge would obviously be the one to beat, with the other nine spots shared among the Moth specialists like Joe Turner, Scott Babbage and Bora Gulari and the “ring-ins” from other classes who included three-times Laser world champion Tom Slingsby, Outteridge’s 49er partner Iain Jensen, Kiwi 49er skipper, Peter Burling and 18ft Skiff legend, John Harris.

The rest of the field included “newbies” like Jeremy Wilmot, brother of Olympic 470 gold medalist Nathan Wilmot, who had bought his Moth only two days before the event started but would go on to make the Gold Fleet. Said Jeremy: “My only (Moth) experience before that was listening to Nath O talk about them. My first sail was in 18 knots of breeze and that was my only training day before the Championship.”

Five women, including Nathan’s talented sister, Haylee, competed against the men in what is an open class, and there were some “old-timers” from the pre-foiling days who were happy just to be sharing the water with so much sailing talent.

The event was covered in detail on the mysailing website, where daily reports can still be sourced. Suffice to say that Outteridge won by 11 points. He totally dominated qualifying, winning eight from nine heats, and in the Gold fleet his worst place was a sixth. He was particularly devastating in the days of 20 knot plus winds, of which there were several.

The challenge

Outteridge is often regarded as a “freak” for his ability to leap from one class to another and instantly succeed, but as Andrew Verdon points out in his Fit for Sailing column on page 52, there is a lot more involved than raw ability. Nathan puts in a lot of time and
a considerable amount of thought.

He says that initially it is a lot harder to sail a Moth than a 49er, until you work out the foils and the wand settings and understand what you can do in certain waves. “It requires more forward thinking because you’re going so fast. But it’s easier in some ways because you don’t have to communicate with someone else – you just make your decision early and execute it.

“When I got my Mach 2, I spoke to A Mac (Andrew McDougall, the designer of the Mach 2) and Bora (Gulari) about the set-up a lot, and then did plenty of two-boat testing to find out what works.

“It can take four to five days to understand how to sail a Moth, or up to a month if your boat isn’t set up properly. I could get in someone’s boat that’s set up poorly and crash all day, whereas someone who is crashing all the time could get into my boat and be sailing properly almost immediately. That’s how important set-up is,” said Nathan.

In the spirit of the Moth Squad that trains and races at Lake Macquarie, where Outteridge lives when not sailing around the globe, he was happy to help out other members of the squad. “I shared what I’d learned with Tom (Slingsby), Goobs (Iain Jensen) and Peter (Burling) so they got up
to speed really quickly. They’re a great group to train with.”

Jeremy Wilmot agrees: “Luckily I had the Moth Squad boys to show me the ropes and help me with my boat. They held nothing back and got me up to speed extremely quickly. True athletes. Funny enough gybing in 30 knots came easy. Tacking was the real problem. I only made one in 10 tacks on the last day of sailing. A quick suggestion to anyone getting into the boats would be to get used to crashing. It will happen a lot, but just get the boat up quickly and get going again.”

Cutting up the foils

The reason that the Moth became the first foiling class and has gone through so much development is because the class rules are very simple – almost anything goes. Nathan says there is an opportunity for a lot more development, in the foils in particular.
“A Moth will foil in seven knots, so in 20 knots obviously the foil was much bigger than it needed to be.”

So he cut 6cm off his foils and faired them with a file. “It was pretty crude but it worked,” he said. He kept a full-sized foil “just in case” and used it on one light day of the Worlds. However, he issues a word of caution to anyone thinking of wholesale surgery. At $6000 for a foil, you wouldn’t want to have too many.

Fixed wings

One area of controversy at this year’s Worlds was the appearance of a fixed wing on the boat of Charlie McKee from the USA, who finished 23rd. A vote had been taken among the various national Moth associations only a week before the event and it was decided to allow the wing to compete.

Nathan Outteridge said that the wing showed potential, particularly upwind, and that McKee was definitely slower when he put his soft sails on after the wing blew apart on a high wind day. “They would need to be more robust – he destroyed all three of them, but he capsized a fair bit and they survived some (of the capsizes).”

However, Nathan isn’t keen on the wholesale adoption of the wing technology. “One of the great things (about the Moth) is you can pack your whole boat and rig up in one box and ship it to Europe for about a thousand dollars. If you had a wing it would be two boxes and double the price. If you had two wings – one high wind and one low wind – that would be three boxes.”

Nathan said it was a bit incongruous that a class that had made a virtue out of having no restrictions would be looking at restricting a particular development. But the good of the class had to be considered.

“We’re trying to change the rules to allow them (wings) to be developed, but if it impacts negatively on the class we would consider banning it. The danger is that the class could become too expensive, then you’d be like the C Class cats and have a small group going round with these huge expensive boxes – we might end up with 30 (entries) at the Worlds instead of 100 plus.”

Judging by spectator numbers, website visits and media interest, the Moths currently have the formula about right. A spectacular-looking boat, the world’s best sailors and a relatively even playing field that leaves room for further speed gains. This is definitely a class to keep an eye on over the next few years.