You never know from one day to the next what you're gonna get depending on where you're sailing in the Sound -- sometimes from one MINUTE to the next. Gotta be a tough place to sail. HOWEVER....(and this is because I've been out of competitive yacht racing for decades)....The _speed_ of these J boats over water is just astonishing to me. I was just as astonished to find out how long the J fleet has been around; but hull design has made some radical leaps since our competitive days racing a Columbia 50, which was designed for the old CCA rating system but under IOR and IRC rules was an absolute stone. I loved sailing on it, it was a beautiful boat; but the change in rating systems effectively retired the Columbia 50 as a competitive offshore racing boat. It appears to me that _Hraven_ would _smoke_ the Col. 50 with 14 less feet of waterline! Up until I started checking out all your videos I'd never seen a jennaker either (asymm). That didn't exist back when I was racing (have I given away my age yet?). Takes some manpower to tack and jibe it but seems to have a lot more sail area than a regular spinnaker, an obvious advantage especially in light air. You said I should get on a boat in 2024; it'd be a blast, but I'm not as agile as I once was. As long as I didn't have to do foredeck I could probably handle it. It'd be LIT to race on a J-109 with how much speed it cranks up.
You never know from one day to the next what you're gonna get depending on where you're sailing in the Sound -- sometimes from one MINUTE to the next. Gotta be a tough place to sail. HOWEVER....(and this is because I've been out of competitive yacht racing for decades)....The _speed_ of these J boats over water is just astonishing to me. I was just as astonished to find out how long the J fleet has been around; but hull design has made some radical leaps since our competitive days racing a Columbia 50, which was designed for the old CCA rating system but under IOR and IRC rules was an absolute stone. I loved sailing on it, it was a beautiful boat; but the change in rating systems effectively retired the Columbia 50 as a competitive offshore racing boat. It appears to me that _Hraven_ would _smoke_ the Col. 50 with 14 less feet of waterline!
Up until I started checking out all your videos I'd never seen a jennaker either (asymm). That didn't exist back when I was racing (have I given away my age yet?). Takes some manpower to tack and jibe it but seems to have a lot more sail area than a regular spinnaker, an obvious advantage especially in light air. You said I should get on a boat in 2024; it'd be a blast, but I'm not as agile as I once was. As long as I didn't have to do foredeck I could probably handle it. It'd be LIT to race on a J-109 with how much speed it cranks up.