July-August 2007

Some pictures of the first season so far and some comments:

RUDDER: Very good! Very pleasant to steer, tacks on a dime and jibes like a go-cart!

CENTERBOARD: It is too small, you have to keep the boat moving fast all the time otherwise it stalls. On starboard tack (board is offset to starboard) when the centerhull starts to fly, the board ventilates often, between the waves. This does not happen on port tack.

HELM BALANCE: Very good all the time, except when I try to fly the screecher upwind. In this case there is so much lee helm that the centerboard stalls all the time and the boat moves sideways... I have tried to increase the mast rake enormously but not much better. The result of this is that I cant use my screecher upwind and I am way under powered going upwind in light winds.

FOLDING SYSTEM: Very good after all! It works fine. The system is a little hard to operate alone but it is a breeze with two people, one for each beam end.

SAILS: My jib is awful! Look at the last pictures on this page. The leach curls upwind like an old bag. The other 2 sails are ok. For racing I would really need a genoa for going upwind and a huge masthead spinnaker for downwind.

MAST: This is the serious weak point of the Scarab22. The section is way too small.Going upwind in 25 knots of wind the mast bend starts to invert, making the mainsail very full and threatening to make the mast crash on my head!! Also, the screecher halyard is attached too high above the hounds so when I crank on the halyard, the mast tip bends forward... I added a second set of shrouds to counteract the screecher halyard tension and it works so far. I am looking at the section Mike Leneman designed for the L-7 as a replacement. Maybe I will build my own carbon wing mast... Any L-7 or F-22 interested?

Overall the boat is solid and really fun to sail but is very very wet!  ;-)