To add my comments, I sailed on the Blade the following day in Singapore. Thanks for the shorter tiller extension Jalani. I was told it was shortened the previous day.

Anyway, my immediate concern for the Blade and its potential is the stiffness of the platform. Coming from the Taipan, it is really, really soft in comparison. The hulls would move independently a couple of inches in different directions from each other. And the wind and wave conditions were very mild. To be competitive, you need a solid and stiff platform. Also the front beam needs to be able to bent upwards 4 or 5mm so when the rig tension comes on it moves to be horizontal. Can't quite get this with current dolphin striker arrangement.

Other things, removed the jib barber haul. This had been placed on to limit movement of the self-tacker jib along the track. Not really in my opinion necessary. Found that with different sheet tension the jib would find its own spot on the track, and with the barber haul any ease in the job-sheet would lose all power in the jib, and height.

Cunningham/downhaul really not a great system. Needs an internal cascading system which has been discussed at length on this forum.

We used the normal Blade-supplied rudders and they felt good. I actually had these on my old Taipan so good to use them again. Tacking and gybing smooth. Gybing a lot quicker than the Taipan, tacking about par.

Rig and sails essentially the same as Taipans (common mast).

Overall, the Blade has the potential to be a great boat. Just a few things that need to be overcome. All new designs do have some level of teething problems and the Blades are going to be easy to fix (I hope).

On the centreboard size, was the boat ever tested with long and narrow boards? The flyer A-Cats, Capricorns and the other new wave-piercing cats have gone to this trend. Interested to know if they were tried or not.

Again, this is was opinion from a couple of hours of sailing. My background has been on Taipans so that is where my base-boat comparison is based on.

In other news, I am in Europe. Once it warms up, should be around for a sail on the F16s. Will be based in London so the Stealth guys are the nearest to me.

JC