Went out sailing today; with Harry Slump. He is finishing up on his homebuild Taipan F16 and wanted a ride on my boat to see what was worth copying and what not. Had a great evening. Relatively flat water. About 10 knots of wind. We went out without the spinnaker at first. Hd some good upwind beats. The problems with my jib are slowly getting sorted. Then we sailed back, that took a little well although it went well enough. However we decided to get back in throw on the spinnaker. Sadly I made a very small mistake that resulted in the retrieval line looping ones around the sheet when the spi was carried on the port side.Made retrieving over that side interesting; should have tried that. Over starboard hoists and drop were rather okay.

But man just beautiful spinnaker weather. I was happy to have 10 knot winds for a change. Up till now I had only had 15 and higher after the DCC event. But the difference is extreme at 10 knots. The boat just goes, so well. I'm getting really hooked on that downhill run. So we did that for about ohh 5 to 10 minutes. It then took us some 30 minutes to sail back up again as we had covered so much ground on the downhill slide.

I think the boat made an impression on my newly introduced crew. Afterall he is almost finish building the Taipan F16 but I don't think he ever sailed one. Now he has and it was quite clear he was very happy with his decision to get one himself. I know I was and there are still heaps of things to improve upon on my boat. Do I need to say Blue spi sheet and Grey downhaul line going overboard ? I'm sure several sailors know what I'm talking about here. Still working on that.

I don't know why but that Taipan goes downwind so well under spinnaker it is just unreal. I'm still in awe about how level and controlled she remains under spi. I've sailed a few F18's in the past and did not have to be ashamed about the results but I found these harder on the crew in respect of control then my shorted hulled F16. It is funny, really funny and I never expected it to be like that. I really did expect it to me more nervous but it just isn't.

We had one good dive with major decelleration but all the other hits were very mild. We did throw up some spray here and there but it never really felt like it slowed the boat down. When the spray started there was not real jolt and when it ended there was not a really a feeling of breaking free. You just punched through the wave, threw some water up and cleared it. We were sailing at 82 + 85 kg ; two blokes at 167 kg total. No worries. we had a great evening and did some upwind beating just to get an extra spi run in before going is at 8 pm when the dusk started to come in.

Great litte bugger.

Harry and Wouter.