I wanted to share this moment that occured yesterday. I was blasting along solo, on the wire, on a reach when I came upon this 30 foot monohull that was doing 15 knots and squirting to 18 on occasion, without a spinnaker. Not too shabby for only a half-cat!



GARY

And of course you know what happened next! The Ultimate 30, "AirTime" in Whisk's wake.



GARY

I've never figured out why people will go so so much trouble and expense just to avoid having a 2nd hull!



Alan Thompson

I20 - San Diego

No Kidding! When I look at that boat I just want to slip a hull under each of those racks and get rid of that silly, rolly-polly thing in the middle.



Best of luck in the big race this week Alan. Give Geoff D. a wave as you blow by. Also Alan, can you please make the start on time this year?



Another picture is attached, see "attachment" link on left.

GARY

In your attachment, I see that you have a furled headsail on your Mystere 6.0. Is that a hooter? Didn't you have a regular spinnaker before (as seen on the Mystere Yahoo forum photos)? How do they compare?

Hi,

Is it hard to single hand? What if you turtle it?



David Ho

TheMightyHobie18 1067

thanks for the great photo- how did your boats performance compare with the wing thing? also, neat roller furled reacher on your boat. what kind is it?

I was easily faster than they were in this situation. I had enough wind on a beam reach to not have to worry about hoisting any more canvas. I pulled up on them, settled down long enough to ready my camera, then got going at speed again. After snapping a few pictures from behind, I sheeted in and easily passed them to windward.



Once ahead, I eased off a bit so that I could get some front shots. Then I allowed myself to fall back into her lee where I took another picture. After that I had no trouble at all in squirting out of their shadow and leaving them in my wake.



This was the second outing for the new owner in this boat and the first time with the boat "heated up." Even so, they had lots of options that could have improved their performance such as three larger sizes of Jibs, Larger Main, Asymmetric Spinnaker on a 25 foot long extending bow pole, and Eight Trapezes per side which would have allowed trapezing off of the racks that they were just sitting on.



They were cruising at about 14 knots and squirting ahead in bursts of about 17 or 18 knots during gusts or wave face runs. I was doing about 15 and my bursts may or may not have been any faster than theirs were but, I was able to hold on to the increased apparent wind for longer periods of time and just leave them behind as they slowed back to cruising speed.



The blue head sail that you saw furled is a small Hooter style set up. It is quite small and is nice for either single handing broad reaching (small, since I am already over-canvased) or sailing to weather in very light air. It is like a mini Hooter. I call it "a Chuter; A Hooter, only cuter."



It is on a roller furler mounted to my 13' spin. pole and hoisted on my spin. halyard. The foot is only about 14 feet and is lead and sheeted in what used to be my barber hauler tackle on the front cross bar. When trimmed on a medium reach, the clew flies right about adjacent to the jib's tack so I get good breathing through the sail slots with little overlap.



On a light day, it can double my upwind boat speed and it came in very handy when I did some voyages to Channel Islands National Park when in the middle of the day we had wind in the 4-5 knot range.



I've attached a picture of the sail on my boat.



GARY

Here is a picture of the sheet. Ignore the heavy looking sheet, that is the jib sheet coming from the furled jib. The chuter sheet is the 1/4" line that goes right to the end of the cross bar.



GARY

Yes it is hard to do, in that it can keep you pretty busy. Once you've already done it once, it is quite easy.



If you turtle, you pray that your mast is not leaking. I have found it just as easy to unturtle solo as it is to unturtle with crew. I have also found that unturtling with water in the mast is usually not possible without assistance.



GARY