Hyde Sails technical Director Mike Lennon has been in touch recently, following his great result in the International Moth's UK Championship held in Weymouth, scoring fourth overall in the huge fleet of 70 boats. You can read Mike's Nationals report here

http://www.hydesails.co.uk/hyde-sails-uk-news/moth-nationals-2013

Mike races a brand new Exocet design built by Maguire boats in Lymington, UK which he uses as a test bed for the latest in his Moth sail designs. These little boats are as high tech as you can get and with no weight limit the options to reduce weight are paramount.

Mike comments:

"Using Barton rings has allowed me to keep the all up weight of the boat down and yet have huge load bearing capacity. On the vang especially I was blowing up some very expensive and heavy high load blocks. The shape of the rings also seems to give the rope a longer life with very little furring even under the highest load.

"The Moth class has no minimum weight so each fitting you add simply increases the all up sailing weight - you have to be sure you need that fitting. Strong and light is what I always look for. My boat is more complex than most so keeping the weight of the fittings down is doubly important.

"For a small boat we have unusually high loads. The Moth can do 17 knots upwind so we often see an upwind apparent over the rig of 40 knots. Blocks that hold up well on much bigger boats can expire quickly in a moth Vang system."

Mike chose our very smallest high load eyes (part#60450) for control lines, as used by our 49er crew at last year's Games, and the next size up (part#60451) for primary loadings in the kicker system. We also supplied him with a selection of small sheaves and bosses for customising line controls.

Here is the link to our high load eye page http://www.bartonmarine.com/latest-developments.asp  

Mike will be racing again in Brixham at the end of August. As well as the Worlds taking place in Hawaii this October, there'll be lots of events planned for 2014. The Worlds, Nationals and Europeans will all be held out of Hayling Island, UK, next year.