Sailing the 5.5u proved to be an absolute cinch, especially if the wind is pretty light. True I'd rented cats before and the uni doesn't have a jib to worry about. But even aspects of uni-rigged-cat-sailing that people warned me would be "hard", such as tacking downwind, turned out to be pretty self-intuitive. In fact, in terms of how easy it is to sail, and how forgiving it was, it's much easier than my Sunfish was (and 3x faster)!

The reason I mentioned that raising the mast would be hard is that the first time we tried it, it took 3 hours. We made the mistake of attempting to raise it straight up instead of positioning it sideways. Then, raising it with the winch, the shrouds kept getting caught under the aft hulls. Sadly there was nothing in the instruction manual that told me this. So the best advice I can give you for your first time out on the boat is: attach the rear shrouds first, use a winch, make sure the mast is mounted sideways (until it naturally rotates forwards), and make sure the shrouds don't get caught!

The rest came pretty naturally

Enjoy!