Simon Payne - the new design and the changed image of the Moth class

by Sail-World on 29 Jan 2009
Top UK Moth sailor, Simon Payne finished second in the recent Australian Nationals, sailing the new Mach 2 design. The boat, one of the first produced, was collected by Payne from the Australian boat builder McConaghy's factory in Zhuhai, China, on his way to the event and had a spectacular début, leading until the penultimate day.

Here he talks to Sail-World about the new design, his performance and the changed image of the class.

'I feel great about where we’re placed. We came here and the boat hadn’t foiled until a day before the event. It’s a new boat, so we’ve still got a few issues with control, but to finish second is fantastic and to pull off some race wins as well is unbelievable. We’re very happy.

'This boat is another generation on in foils. The designer of this boat and the Blade Runner is Andrew McDougall, and this is his second go, so we hope there are improvements in many areas. Things like you can see . . . it’s a smaller boat as well, so there’s less drag. All the wand stuff is housed in the bonnets under the front, which cuts down on windage. We’ve improved the boom, which is tapered. The whole thing is lighter and a little bit slipperier.

'The whole boat is quite a minimalist boat. That makes her quite light, and that’s always a good thing. We’ve had help from a guy called Jim Bungener who works for an America’s Cup team, and we’ve used some of their software to help us test the foils.

'Because we’re trying to fit all the controls under that bonnet we’ve still got control issues. In these conditions you can compensate with your body weight, but we’re still not getting the wand working quite as well as we might. If that’s the only thing that’s gone wrong this week than frankly we’re absolutely delighted. The boat is solid and it’s gone down the mine a few times and held together. The customers are going to get a really robust product.'

Sail-World asked -'After a flying start to the week, winning your very first race and adding three more wins before the whole thing went tits up, what are your thoughts looking back at those two pivotal races?

'I might have well as not got up yesterday. I shouldn’t have got up yesterday. I was over the line in the first race, which was my fault, but sometimes you’ve got to push it and that happens about once every three years for me.

'The second race I was struggling a bit downwind. I capsized and then I went through the trampoline, so I didn’t have a tramp, and I couldn’t sail the boat. A tramp virtually works off. You can’t sit anywhere and it’s really hard, so that’s why I lost it yesterday. But I had my fair share of luck at the beginning of this event.'

The foiler Moth has received a huge amount of publicity over the past couple of years and is now seen as a future Olympic class. What has brought the class out of the closet and made it an acceptable mainstream choice?

'The Moth scene is fantastic. Most guys and some girls I know in their 30s and 40s are on a diet trying to get into the Moth class. In itself that’s a good thing, because they’re down at the gym getting fit.

'I think it’s because the boat is like where windsurfing was all those years ago where pulling off a gybe is great fun, people learning new manoeuvres - it’s quite frontier based, and people are learning to sail them and having just as much fun darting around as they are sailing races.

'The Moth scene in the UK is not very active right now because it’s about minus six degrees, but it’s growing. My home club Hayling Island has got fourteen moths there now. We don’t have the depth of some of the Olympic sailors like Nathan and Charlie McKee in the US who are coming into the class quite yet, but that’s because team GBR is a pretty intense place to be right now.

'Nathan Outteridge is a professional sailor, and you can see how good he is out there. It’s wonderful for the Moth class to have people like Nathan coming into it. It’s a privilege for people like me to race against him. He’s a class act, and he’ll go far.

Five years ago the Moth class was full of people with beards tinkering in the garage and making stuff in the kitchen, and look at it now. It just makes you feel great that we’re one of the premier dinghy classes at the moment.'

This seems to have been very much a personal campaign for you. Putting together the new design and seeing it through the design and building to this very public launch . . . where to now for Simon Payne and the Mach 2?

'We always said when we started building Mach 2s, that we were designing all those months ago, that out goal was to show up at the Australian Nationals and show that we could deliver a boat to that time limit, that it would be quick and that it would be sea worthy. To take out four races and come second overall is fantastic. There’s so much more to come from our boat. I’m not sure there’s so much more to come from me.

'I’d like a Radox bath right now and a gin and tonic at the same time. I’m 44. I think I’m catching my second wind, really.

'There’s a lot of people like me who’ve had kids and either got divorced or kids who’ve moved on a bit, and they’ve got a bit of disposable income and they want to get a boat. They don’t necessarily want to go to another bloody open meeting and race against 200 other boats; they just want to have a high quality boat and go sailing in their little bite of time where they might have played golf otherwise.

'Sailing is better than golf. Was it Mark Twain who said golf spoils a good walk?'

Simon Payne was the International Moth 2006 World Champion, the 2005, 2006 and 2007 European Champion and the 2008 UK National Champion.