Well, here goes !

Test conditions were very gentle or at least they appeared to be so while sailing the VWM Blade F16. 10-11 knots max. Some 1 foot high waves, maybe a little higher, but the Blade just passed them without much reaction at all. Once in a while the top of a wave hit the bridle tang fitting and some spray would be thrown-up. Sometimes this was against the mainbeam but never did we feel the boat decellerated as a result. You see and here the spray but you don't really feel the thump that older designs used to have. The fairing is doing its job very well.

I also found this boat to be dryer than I expected it too be, which is very pleasant. In general the boat felt really stable. I now understand why people say that the boat feel longer and bigger then it really is. Because it does feel exactly like that. My own Taipan feels noticeably more like a 16 footer. This Blade feels like it is 18 foot long.

I knew the rig from my own boat as it is largely a copy of the Taipan but with an updated fat head mainsail and a Landenberger spi. That Landenberger spi is just fine. Very predictable and easy on the required sheet tension. It is however cut to make full use of the available luff length so you really do have to make the bowlines as small as you can get them or risk sailing with a slack spi luff. The spi is much better then my own 2003 spi. It was very easy to get the boat to go under spi. Actually when I helmed it under spi the boat felt really calm as if we were not working the boat hard enough. But as the GPS track showed, we were doing excellent speed. On my own boat the spinnaker legs feel more like work on the Blade is feels, again, like a bigger boat. It has nible steerage so that is still there but it doesn't feel as "on the edge" as on my Taipan, but I'm sure the speed was just the same or better. I think this to be a very good thing, even though I had to get used to it. Afterall this blade is less demanding to sail under spi then my own boat.

Control was excellent under spi. On my own Taipan I really do have to steer and sheet the mainsail traveller at the same time otherwise the boats doesn't want to turn quickly enough OR you can feel the boat slow down because of the large rudder movement. On my Taipan doing both simultaniously feel really responsive but it is work and you need to develop the right coordination for it. On the Blade however I never sheeted the main traveller. I just steered and steered and steered through all the waves and wind changes. Control, in my opinion, is absolute. Calm compared to the Taipan but absolute nevertheless. Not once did the rudders stall or vent or even throw up rooster tales. The boat was easy to put through the required S-curves when sailing competitively under spi.

Because of the overall calm feel and the assured control no matter what happens I feel the Blade is one of the best boats for relatively inexperienced but serious sailors. I personally could find a fault with the design, but then again the conditions were not extreme in any sense.

The boat I was on is still very new and the owner still needs to modify his control systems so that they work spotlessly. This often means using bungees and guiding rings/shackles. So the lines did occassionally get into a tangle or dropped overboard creating drag that could be felt by some loss of boatspeed.

We sat on the retrieval line a few times and that control will be modified shortly as well. I remember that I took a whole year of modifying my boat so that every system worked as intented and without hang-ups. The new owner still needs to cover that ground.

Glenn Ahsby has made a very good jib and mainsail. The allow full control and the jib remains firm what ever you do, pointing high or running low for high speed. I already covered the Landenberger spi. I personally considering buying one of those.

We did tweak a few stuff here and there. In the selftacking setup we took some friction out of the system and that made a noticeable difference. It is too much to cover all of this now, but as I said earlier a full season of tweaking to get the max. out can be expected. But still the boat felt nice and stable and bristling with potential as it is now. Phill I really do like the design !!!

I also like the fact that the fron foot of the hulls are still cutting the water instead of slapping it. The slapping is further back. This means that with the right trim teh boat enters the wave very nicely without much fuss at all. Also as soon as you lift the luff hull clear of the water the boat finds a groove and becomes completely quiet. In htis attitude it feels just like a cutter and not at all like a planer. Remember the discussions of past ? I think the hull strikes a really good compromise between these two modes.

.... I'm extremely tired now, so I'm going to bed, more report tomorrow ....


Wouter