Pauls erster Testbericht

We've had two sails on the new wide-racked boat (with the racks extended a foot aft of the transom). The first sail was in 6-10 knots of wind so there wasn't much to tell. The second sail was in 12-15 kts and there is something to tell. In short the boat seemed to be significantly faster, both upwind and down.

We were sailing with a combined crew weight of 180kg (pretty heavy). With that weight we were just able to stay out on the wire upwind in the lulls, so the rig was sufficient to keep us powered up in those conditions. The boat felt very fast. Downwind the boat was a trip - a solid whoopee-fest even in 15kts. Besides being bow up and very fast, it struck me that there seemed to be more flow over the mainsail than usual so that the boat responded more than usual to mainsheet adjustment.

Although there is a bigger distance to travel in the tacks and jibes, the manuevers did not seem significantly harder. In many ways the jibes are easier because you have more speed going into them.

We will be sailing two boats against eachother this week, one with wide racks and one without. We should have a good quantitative comparison soon.

-Paul