We took the opportunity of a beautiful autumn day in Sydney to do some two handed sailing on Passion X and get some engine hours up before the trip to Port Stephens next week.
Elaine and I took Passion X up the Harbour in what I would call our safe cruising mode. We put a reef in the mainsail so that the square head clears the twin backstays and set the 105% No 3 genoa. We tried a few combinations including motor sailing with the No 3 genoa alone and motor sailing with the reefed main and genoa. The conditions were very mild and I cannot recall the breeze being over 12 knots but we made good time with the shortened rig. We are still running the motor in so much of the motoring was moving around the low revs mark and under 6 knots but in the occasional brief high rev range we did 8 knots. That is the maximum we ever got out of Passion with the bigger motor and a clean bottom so I estimate we are going faster in Passion X with three quarters of the power we had on Passion.
After a visit to our Laser friends at Middle Harbour Amateur Sailing Club we hoisted the reefed main and headed out to sea. The reefing system is identical to the very satisfactory system we had on Passion right down to the colour of the reef lines so putting in the reef is simple and with the first reef in we have more headroom under the boom.
Chart plotter tracks from Passion X’s first taste of the open sea
We gave the autopilot a good workout both beating and running and it works very well.
With the reefed main and small genoa tacking was very simple and Elaine could winch on the geona while the mainsail was left to fend for itself.
It was good to get some extended hours of motor running and for Elaine to see that Passion X is just as well handled with two on board as was Passion although we have not yet organised a spray dodger.
Passion X back on the mooring after a very pleasant afternoon sailing out to sea