Drifter...

[Shawn]

All season I have wanted to try out the 170% drifter. Winds have been too high except for one day there wasn't even enough of a breeze to fill the drifter. I *finally* had a good chance to use my drifter yesterday.

The wind was very light, typically under 3 knots most of the time out. Considering the wind speed the drifter was driving the boat very well. In light air boat speed was averaging  around 2/3s of wind speed. It helped that the bay was smooth as glass.

For example 2.8 knots of wind, boat was doing about 2 knots.









From what I could see it looked as if Serenity was the fastest *sailing* boat on the water yesterday. Not many were even trying to sail though. It was very peaceful just ghosting along.

Shawn

[Salty19]

Beautifully cut sail!!!  Glad you like your drifter.  We've used ours more than I thought we would this year. I don't think ours performs as well as yours, but then again I don't have instruments to tell me wind speed.  It's a "flying" drifter so it does not tack as closely to the wind as your hank on would.

[Bob23]

Thank you Shawn. We don't get a lot of light wind days down here so I'll probably pass.
btw...how do you like your Garmin 498? Would you recommend it?
bob23

[Shawn]

Salty,

Thanks, I am very pleased with how the drifter worked. I had it cut with a higher foot to keep visibility better. You can see that in this picture when I test fit it:



I had considered a flying drifter but decided I wanted the greater upwind flexibility with the hank on sail. For downwind I can use my whisker pole with the drifter or put up the asymmetric spinnaker.

The wind meter was a wonderful addition this season both for direction (esp. when the bimini is up) and for knowing the wind speed.

Shawn

[Shawn]

Bob,

The 498 is pretty nice. I picked it up used for $200 and sold the 478 it replaced for more than twice that. The 498 outputs the proper NMEA data for my autopilot which is great. It also has a sounder built in so with a $50 transducer it can also give depth readings.

Shawn

[Shawn]

We went out today and winds were extremely light. When we got out it was less than 2 knots. Put up the main and the drifter and were moving along around a knot. It was a nice challenge to practice light air sailing. It is interesting when the wind is so low it is hard to tell what point of sail you are on. At one point we were running and the wind meter was reading 0 and not moving at all. The boat was doing about a knot and it wasn't the tide as we had steerage.

There was a Marshall 22, Nonsuch 30, Capri 22 and a couple of larger 33-36' sailboats out with their sails up. The Marshall was maybe 1/2-3/4 mile ahead of us and sailing in the same direction. When we got to within about 100' of him he fired up the iron wind and tacked in a different direction. After he motored about a mile or two away he tried sailing again. We sailed over to him (he was totally becalmed) and when we got near him again he dropped sails and motored far away. We sailed over to the Nonsuch 30 for a closer look (love Nonsuchs). He too was becalmed and after we sailed to, and away, from him he also dropped sail and motored away. The wind picked up to 4-5 knots so we pointed over toward Jamestown. Heading at us was a 36ish footer that was actually moving (slowly) under sail. When we got up close to him we tacked around to the same point of sail and Serenity just left him behind easily. We crossed the bay before he was even halfway across.

Kind of cool being the fastest sailboat on the water.   A few other sailers might be thinking about drifters after watching us today.




When close hauled I was surprised how close the clews of both sails were.





Shawn