sailhack.net

First sail on the Viper 640

This past weekend we finally launched the Viper for the fitst time. 

After several hours on Saturday getting the new carbon mast stepped, rig tuned (approximately) and a bunch of other little rigging projects done, we put the boat in the water in time for a late afternoon sail.  Many thanks to Charles and Dave for their help and patience as we got the boat ready to go.  (How many times did I say “wait, just one more thing”?)

 We had a nice sail in fairly light air on Saturday.  At first, we had 4 guys onboard, which was a bit cozy, but the boat really came to life in the light breeze with two onboard, when we dropped the other two guys off at the dock.   After getting off the boat, Dave K managed to get a couple of good pictures of the boat in the water (thanks for the pics, Dave!)

On Sunday we went out again after another couple of hours of additional setup work (fixing little things we’d identified during Saturday’s sail).  This time, the breeze was up, with wind in the mid teens, gusting to 25+ knots.  And wow…  did the viper move!  We didn’t fly the spinnaker, since I still need to finish setting up the running rigging for the kite, but even with main & jib only, we were easily popping up on plane and taking off on some screaming reaches.  Fun stuff!  

We managed to put the boat on its ear once when I didn’t react quickly enough to a huge puff (operator error!), but the boat behaved very well, sitting there with the leward rail in the water until we eased sheets, at which point it settled back down and we were off and running again.  All in all, much fun was had!