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My wife gave me permission to go sailing yesterday while she took my son to some soccer event. The forecast appeared ho-hum 5-10 kts. out of the S.W. Instead, there developed some higher extended gusts in the teens with widespread small whitecaps in relatively flat water on the Rappahannock River.
My Pearson 28 with a clean bottom and repaired rudder showed 7.9 kts. with smooth, stable sailing on a beam/broad reach, pause at 1:05 on this video for speedometer readout:
As you can see in the video, the Pearson is sailing faster than the developing waves, so it was not surfing. (This boat does not plane, but will surf a bit: the only other times I have exceeded hull speed were under spinnaker, riding down small waves.) This is on a 24 ft. designed water line; I keep the boat as light as possible. The hull speed should be around 6,8 knots. After the first hour, my GPS in these photo showed a top speed of 7.5 kts., with an average of 6 kts, which included 15 minutes motoring at 5 kts. from my slip to the river and heading into the wind to raise sails (I also took photos of the bow waves, which were pretty cool):
https://picasaweb.google.com/101935788163929897438/FastSailing90614?authuser=0&feat=directlink
I was concerned about the upwind leg so I dropped the genoa and still made 5+ kts. on main alone. The wind lessened a bit, and I was able to raise the genoa again to sail back:
One of the best sailing days in a long time. Ironically, I saw only 2 or 3 other keelboats sailing out on the river in the 3 hours I was out sailing.
My Pearson 28 with a clean bottom and repaired rudder showed 7.9 kts. with smooth, stable sailing on a beam/broad reach, pause at 1:05 on this video for speedometer readout:
As you can see in the video, the Pearson is sailing faster than the developing waves, so it was not surfing. (This boat does not plane, but will surf a bit: the only other times I have exceeded hull speed were under spinnaker, riding down small waves.) This is on a 24 ft. designed water line; I keep the boat as light as possible. The hull speed should be around 6,8 knots. After the first hour, my GPS in these photo showed a top speed of 7.5 kts., with an average of 6 kts, which included 15 minutes motoring at 5 kts. from my slip to the river and heading into the wind to raise sails (I also took photos of the bow waves, which were pretty cool):
https://picasaweb.google.com/101935788163929897438/FastSailing90614?authuser=0&feat=directlink
I was concerned about the upwind leg so I dropped the genoa and still made 5+ kts. on main alone. The wind lessened a bit, and I was able to raise the genoa again to sail back:
One of the best sailing days in a long time. Ironically, I saw only 2 or 3 other keelboats sailing out on the river in the 3 hours I was out sailing.
