I saw Pen Duick IV sailing, the morning after she arrived a day ahead of Windward Passage's winning finish in the TransPac- at Diamond Head. We had sailed out from the AlaWai Harbor on a nice 27 ft leaner to the finish line to see WP come in early on a beautiful morning. Then I heard this sizzling noise and just to weather of us was PenDuick IV, looking like a huge grey spider on 3 sticks, screaming past us at way more than twice our speed, both full battened sails sheeted in tight, big jib drawing. Absolutely breath-taking I thought. Incroyable as they say in France! A chill went down my backbone, and I knew right then I would be sailing multihulls forever! Not to make a point of it (HAH!), Taberly sailed about 2 miles to weather, sailed around Windward Passage that was herself under full spinnaker and really hauling the mail. Taberly then put up his chute, passed WP easily, and ran way ahead past the Diamond head buoy. Then he repeated this "in your face" gesture, going back to weather, passing and jibing then popping his chute and zooming ahead WP a second time past the Diamond Head Buoy.
I guess monohull sailors get furious about this kind of showing off. What, was he supposed to go as slow? I thought it was fantastic and thus changed my life. Nobody at the Waikiki Yacht Club liked this boat.
The novice sailor under discussion would have done well to do some engineering research by looking seriously at Taberly's excellent design. It looks awful to me: I was there and have seen the real Elephant.