For those who are not on our mailing list you can view Craig’s report on Roam’s first sail below.
Craig Schionning was on board Roam for her first real test sail with the brand new wardrobe of sails.
Michael Hoult received his Genoa a couple of weeks prior to the main and has been using this together with the engines as he cruised the NSW coast. Michael was originally planning to cruise as far as Port Stephens to the home port of Spirited Designs however the weather had different ideas and caused some delays. Since the main sail was going to be fitted in Cronulla just south of Sydney, Michael invited Craig down for the big day. There was a great deal of anticipation leading up to the delivery date for his main sail. Thursday the 17th of December was the date set and as luck would have it, it was the day after the violent storms that hit the area with damaging hail and tornados!
The Thursday was an almost perfect day with light breezes in the morning for the test sail with the sail maker but freshened up nicely for the ‘shake-down’ sail. A young local to the area, Ethan Coleman, a 14yo budding photographer made contact with the Roam crew and offered his services to take footage of Roam with his drone. Ethan trades as ‘Pure Aerials’ and has a huge future in front of him! So with the sails tested to the sailmaker’s approval a bit of fun could be had!
Craig reports first-hand from the helm:
“On board was myself, Michael and Larissa with Andy, Michael’s brother in the dinghy taking photos. I have been looking forward to experiencing the performance of the Spirited 480 compared with the 380 and I wasn’t disappointed! The extra length creates a smoother ride with less fore and aft motion. The helm felt light and balanced, and hard on the wind the boat tracked well. Our first couple of runs were on the wind while the crew found their feet but after this we freed off on a close reach and Roam reacted. The breeze started off at around 12 knots and strengthened gradually. Although we were slow tacking the headsail around the boat never showed any signs of stalling and going into irons and was very responsive on the helm even at slow speeds. There was a case where we were on a close reach with the sails set accordingly and we were running out of water so put in a last minute tack, without hardening the sails Roam spun through the tack without an issue. As expected on a larger cat like this the speed is deceptive and feels effortless. The last couple of runs across the bay we saw a true wind strength gusting to almost 20 knots and Roam was in her element. The dinghy-like feel from the helm made Roam so much fun to sail!”
A special thanks to Michael, Larissa and Andy for a great day on the water, Merry Christmas guys!