New Boat Sailing

[Phil Alderson]

We got 3218 Zero Gravitas out on the water just over a week ago it was bright sunshine with hardly any wind.

For a first sail it went well, although there was not quite enough wind to test it properly, well that changed this Sunday.

The weather was nice in the morning while I was rigging and sorting a few little jobs off the list, but then just before we launched it got up to about 18-20 knots.

The boat felt pretty great upwind, supprisingly settled, for a second sail, and how rusty I am at helming from the wire. Our first few tacks were not succsesfull and we did quite a bit of swimming

But it was a buzz getting the boat upright and going again. Compared to Pocket Rocket it felt a lot smoother through the waves, not as much slamming or bouncing, but still lively. I also noticed a lot of resurve stability from the wings when things were starting to go wrong.


It is still quite a wet boat.


Unfortunatly we did not manage to get the kite up as my measurements on the T-foil were a bit off and even at mimimum setting it was still quite positive. In that windspeed with the kite up we would have been going down the mine pretty quickly.
I need to sort something with the T-foil as a priority but still loads of other things to do, and I am really looking forward to a good kite run.

[Clive Everest]

Good to see that the Scotish summer has arrived.
Looking at the pictures we would call that 25 knots down here.
Well done.

Clive

[Phil Alderson]

We did have a good run of warm and sunny, but it is now back to rain and windy again.

[dave_ching]

Looks amazing

[Phil Alderson]

Just had a good three days racing at the Largs Regatta Festival, and I am really happy with the boat. Saterday was round the cans in about 5-10 kts, with a good mix of single and twin string conditions in bright sunshine.
Sunday we sailed around the Island of Cumbrae, with the more normal liquid sunshine but a good solid breeze from the East mostly about 15kts but over 20 at times. This meant we started with a white sail reach for about 3-4 miles before we could bear off and hoist the kite, by this point there were no other dinghies in sight. The Cat fleet of A's an F18 and a H5.9 started 5 minutes after us and they caught up about when we hoisted. One Gybe and about 6 miles of twin wire blasting and dodging keelboats later we had to drop before close reaching to the bottom of the island, then a hard beat back around the bottom and up the chanel to the finnish, the wind had got up a bit by then and we were fully depowered, and still quite overpowered heading into the finish. We were first monohull round by about 10 minutes to a lowrider moth.
Monday we had a good couple of races in a decent wind again, although the fleet was quite small.

There are a few photos from the event here: https://marcturner.photoshelter.com/index/G0000NdEQ0hrCNeM/I0000ZZhoWjG.LuI