It was not designed as an upwind sail, but surprisingly, it can sail pretty close to the wind. I suspect that it would not be faster upwind that a well sailed conventional Wave.
I have only used this rig on a 38 mile distance race (Mug Race, Jacksonville Florida) and it was all down wind in light air. It was very fast...faster when there was more wind.
I will be doing more testing this week.
We had our local fleet races last night around the standard Wave triangle with a windward leeward course.
I tried to stay out of the way of the rest of the boats, not passing to windward or contesting mark roundings.
Wind was 6-12 and shifty.
Upwind the boat clearly makes better VMG with the sail furled. The added windage makes it slightly slower than a "clean" Wave.
On reaches it is clearly faster, the windier it gets, the more the speed advantage.
Dead down wind you cannot make enough VMG to catch a Wave running free.
Any advantage I gained on the reaches was lost at mark roundings because there is so much extra to do.
In my opinion, these sails are great for showing off and reaching back and forth with a lot of excitement. On a distance race with mostly reaching, it will outsail its handicap.
Rick claims his "hooter" will sail as fast and point as high (which isn't very high BTW) as a Hobie 16.
I don't believe it, but we will do some one on one testing, perhaps next week.
