My own experience was based on a long distance race towards Stoke Gabrial which is further up the river Dart and we started with a 35 minute reach and run down to a bottom mark with multiple gybes but not exactly testing in a force 2. I rounded the mark and hardened up just as a sea breeze hit the fleet and ordinarily I would have relished this turn of events but the Solo seemed very underpowered. In hindsight, would did I expect! The fleet drew away from me and even those who I would have considered to be overpowered were very competent, pulling their control lines accordingly to de-power before changing back down a gear as the wind softened. Meanwhile my Solo felt very unbalanced and obviously being well overweight did nothing to help, the sail not providing much grunt and it would need to disperse a lot of water to push me through the short chop that was quickly building.
Anne Marie Coyle opted to put up the B Plan sail but the wind did not get above 5 mph.
There were some other factors which made the voyage unpleasant, my rudder was lifting slightly and I crushed my tiller extension so maybe my judgement is unfair. I would suggest the biggest issue Joddy and I faced was the dilemma of knowing which rig to use, the fa ff of swapping rigs time consuming and ultimately wrong on both occasions.
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