I think so since I heard from a guy in Culebra that Patterson had been legally blind for some time but still sailed on occasion. Eventually his failing eyesight and age led to him selling the tri. Great boat BTW, wonder what the selling price was.
Hey, sorry for the delay to respond (was having an off line conversation with Three) and if my comment was misunderstood. Like yours (great photo BTW) I know a number of high quality Farrier home builds (I am guessing we both know many really poor ones as well) - Greg Carter's F36/39 cruising Baha is another example of a great build out there doing that! My point was about the challenges of getting insurance on the Farrier home builds. That has turned into an issue for many who don't have an established carrier and even for some who do.
yes... we were blown away by that one too, never came close to 300 before. Our three and a half day average was 243 miles/day and the first 12 hours were in very light head winds in the Cook Straight, we even motored for a bit when the wind dropped below 2kn.
I have next to no multi cruising experience but saw somewhere that too much speed in a multi running before the wind was a problem. Something about not being able to round up into the wind to drop or reef sails so one has to hang on, skipping off waves and hope a lee shore isn’t up ahead. Is that just lead mine BS?
The Neel that was 1st OA in the ARC was a factory turbo'd ringer, with a race crew, rotating carbon mast & dagger board you don't see on the production boats.
Agreed. But got 3rd and 9th in the 2020 multihull division. So knowing nothing about the crews or the other boats in the class, I'd assume this would suggest that they weren't total dogs. Plus yachting journalists, who get to sell lots of different vessels, generally comment on performance and feel being better that the average cruising catamaran. Yes, they may have been bribed, but I assume the production cat builders can pay more in bribes.
I recall looking at a cruising cat that had completed the ARC and then cruised through the canal to SD about thirty years ago and asking the skipper's wife how they adjusted leech tension on the self tacking jib. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
My wife has sailed with me on a circumnavigation of the UK, and a few trips to the Baltic. She can stand watch, reef in a storm with waves washing the deck, fly a spinnaker and pick me up it'd I go overboard (well, she can pick up a fender tied to a bucket, luckily not tried in anger yet). But all her the same question and you'd get a blank look.
