We finally had a chance to actually sail our new boat over the weekend. This is the first time we have raised the sails since we purchased her over a month ago. (On the trip from Halifax we had Gale-force winds, so it was too windy to raise sail.) We were prepared to crawl along under sail - after all, the boat is a 22k pound, sloop rig. When we first raised sail we had 10 knots dead astern coming from the North. We sailed wing-on-wing at a respectable 6 knots. She was surprisingly balanced going wing-on-wing, but we rigged a preventer just in case. (Nothing worse than getting a full sail slammed over the cabin top - or worse, into your head). After an hour or so the wind direction changed to give us a little bit of an East mixed in with the North wind. It was enough of a shift to allow us to move the sails to the same side. The wind speed climbed to a steady 14 with gusts to almost 20. Our speed jumped to over 7 knots, sometimes almost hitting 8. We flew down the river at the fastest speed we've ever sailed, all the while reminding each other - this is really cool! It was one of those days that will go down in permanent ink into the memory bank.
