Thanks Todd.

http://www.gulfportyachtclub.com/id4.html

I'll be on the beach most of June and July.

Sorry to hear that Pete. I'm headded out back right now to get a last sail in before going off to work tomorrow. Nice seabreeze right now, Airport is reporting 110 at 16G21! I'm going to strap on the GPS and see what I can do. If you can get to Sebring we can match race! See ya.

Well, after an hour of trying, all I could get up to was 16.9 kts on the GPS. I found if I tried to "heat it up" I would burry the bow and of course slow way down. So I tried going high, bear off in the puffs and pump the spin sheet to get the bows up on a plane, sort of. I just needed more wind I guess.

What felt the fastest was when it was time to come home, I was going too high to run the spin, so I just eased the traveler out, boards half way up, and sat at the back, pumping the main and traveler in every gust, it felt faster than going downwind with the spin. But with my GPS taped to the boom, I couldn't read it from where I was sitting, so I don't know which was faster. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Sooooo.... your experiments were for speed? Or for best VMG?

I was going purely for top speed, not VMG. My VMG would have been very good as I was running very deep with the spin up, litterally hopping over the waves when I could get in synch and pump the spin, throw my weight back and get both bows to pop up and jump over the waves instead of plowing into the backs. It was a great ride but just not as "fast" through the water. Every time I tried to turn up and get it going faster the lee bow would just burry to the beam which is like slaming on the brakes. And I had the boards up at least half way. At one point I burried both bows to the mast and thought I was going swimming but I had already dumped the spin sheet which helped save it.

I was really surprised when I finally came home on a long broad reach without the spin, I felt the boat was going much faster through the water than when going downwind with the spin. The sound of water slapping the bottom of the hulls and all the spray were both much more. The vmg on that angle was about -zero- if you are trying to go from A to C mark, but I was just going for speed.

Gotta go pack now...See ya. Go Celtics! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />