First Impressions

Never took the reef out in approx 10Kts. Even with 4 on board sitting on high side lots of heel. If the boat is raced in 30knts with full sail I need to learn how to reduce heel Saw Colin doing a check sail single handed with FULL sail. He seemed comfortable - perhaps unlike J24s these boat are designed to sail with much heel

Both sails had a lot of twist. I could not get the head sail trimmed to what I consider correct twist (All tell tales breaking at the same time) due to position of cars. Need to move them forward

With the car forward to reduce twist and sheeted hard sail was still very deep as clew hit cars and limited trim that could be applied. Deep sail will I think limit pointing ability but did not check tacking angles

Similarly main had much twist even sheeted hard with traveler centered


We did hit 6.5 knts and more with approx 10 knts of wind so the sail trim worked. The boat was easy to control, very sensitive and could be sailed close to a buoy in a trial rounding. Need to work out a drill for handling sheets during tacking for good racing.

Tried stopping the boat from a close reach per the last step in COB. The boat coasted further than I expected given how fast it lost momentum under power. It will be important to lose speed after tacking to broad reach during COB

Down wind sailing the main hits the spreaders very early but did not do much down wind sailing . Will be O.K. with a chute - Do we have chutes? Members will need to be careful not to damage sails on spreaders

Crew complained furler hard to operate (We did furl downwind behind main) Reported also finding same problem on previous sails. I think it may be a question of finding the correct position to get good purchase on the furler line

When docking in cross wind I had trouble because I did not expect how quickly the bow fell off and the boat moving sideways. I understand the plan is to put the Martins on the end of the docks that seems a good plan to make docking easier. I need to practice docking and make more use of the motor rather thank letting the boat coast in. Watched Colin docking. Made good use of motor particularly in reverse to pull stern in to dock after
nosing bow in.

Bottom line - Great boat!! fast and fun like driving a sports car after driving a Cadillac. Comfortable to sit and plenty of cockpit room so much better than a J24. No motor lifting problems of J24. I'm sold!