The original post is a little confusing. Frenchie makes reference to Wouters comment about a beach cat "sometimes hitting 30knts". This has hardly anything to do with average speeds in speed trials. Speed trenches are an unrealsitic example of the conditions we see in an open body of water. A boat will clearly have a lower top speed in flat waters but with the help of waves(and the gulf stream), it's a different ball park. Even high speed power boats prefer slightly wavy conditions for top speeds(for different reasons) over flat water.

High 20s (knts) have been reported many times in history, Frenchie simply needs to get out there and experience it for himself.

BTW Frenchie 1/3 > 1/3.5 ;-)

Marc