Hey Ron,

I'm very impressed...

We left the Cape Fear River/Southport on Tuesday AM after sitting there for a day to let a strong westerly fade a bit and move NW... a few miles out, we settled into a broad reach in about 15-25 knots, 3-5' seas, a single reef and both headsails on this cutter rig. Challenging conditions for any vane, to be sure, especially when used by someone for the first time, with jury-rigged control lines, etc. Damn thing worked like a charm straight away, I was really impressed... I wouldn't say it performed better than my Sailomat would have on the same boat that day, but I'll bet it would have taken a newbie considerably longer to get a Sailomat dialed in as well as we did right off the bat...

The breeze faded a bit towards evening and came aft, and I stopped using it after dark, primarily because the full cockpit enclosure on this boat rendered it virtually unusable at night, almost impossible to see and make course corrections necessary as the breeze got flukier... Came close to lighting up the engine again, but this boat continued to move along pretty well, and by next morning we had 20-25 knot again out of the NE... We were able to stay on starboard tack all the way down to Sapelo Sound before jibing over to port, whereupon the wind quickly died... Didn't use the vane that day, save for a couple of hours after we jibed, as we were sailing DDW in fairly big and confused seas, typical Georgia seacoast crap, and I didn't want to risk an accidental jibe...

Only problem I had was figuring out how to engage it in sportier conditions, and that was largely due to the set up on this boat... Again, the cockpit enclosure greatly inhibits your ability to do this sort of stuff, I felt like I needed a pair of knuckledragger's arms and another pair of eyes in the back of my head to steer and engage the coupler at the same time - having an autopilot on this boat sure would have helped... One thing's for sure, I'm sure gonna have my fill of hand-steering by the end of this trip, that's for damn sure... (grin)

Engine came back on late that afternoon, and we motored overnight hitting St. Augustine Inlet at dawn, 47 hours out of Cape Fear - and about 90 minutes ahead of bernie's Valiant 42... (grin) I must say, I'm really impressed with the sailing performance of this Tayana 42, nice boat, very powerful... And yes, the cockpit enclosure was quite nice on those chilly overnights, but it sure makes actually sailing the boat a hell of a lot more work. But, for motoring down the Ditch, they are the cat's meow, easy to see why they've become so popular...

best regards,

Jon