The moth class is, to my mind, the most exciting sailing dinghy class there is. The boats are impossibly fast and quite spectacular to watch, and once you have sailed on its very difficult to go back to anything else. The other bonus is that that the only class rules are to do with length, width, mast height and sail area, leaving all the other aspects open to be improved and invented. The class has been around since the 1930s and the designs began as heavy wooden scows. A long history of development has lead to the 30kg carbon fibre missiles we have today. The latest and probably most notable development came about in Perth in 2003, when actively controlled hydrofoils started to appear. Overnight the boats almost doubled in speed and complexity and the class has expended around the world since then.

I bought Blue Meanie third hand and very cheaply several years ago, shortly after the first boats were coming out with foils. I have spent a great deal of time learning about naval architecture and fluid dynamics and experimenting with hydrofoils and carbon laminates to bring the boat almost up to date. The nature of the class today is that it is becoming so high tech that the state of the art construction processes are virtually out of reach of a ‘home builder’, and while I accept I’ll probably never win a moth championship, the process of designing, building and testing hydrofoils is supremely rewarding. The boat has taught me a great deal about structural design and engineering, and about being intuitive and creative in that context.

http://nickflutter.blogspot.com

http://www.moth-sailing.org