Hey Tom,

I've never sailed those boats, so I'm just going by appearance, of course... but such a boat type would not be my first choice for doing such a trip in comfort...

Jeanneau touts the "powerful hull lines" that Philippe Briand designed, but with a displacement of only 23,000 lbs, that boat could be very exhausting to sail to weather day after day... Last time I did that trip, it was on a Trintella 50 - similar to the one you were aboard a couple of weeks ago - which is a very heavy boat, with a fairly deep forefoot, by comparison... We ran into tradewind conditions only about 250 miles SE of Hatteras, which basically continued unabated all the way to Virgin Gorda... Even in that boat, we got beat up pretty good...

Seems like you'd have to slow that Jeanneau down considerably in such conditions, otherwise she want to launch herself off the back of every other wave, then coming down very hard on all that flat hull section forward... In my experience, that sort of thing gets old, VERY quickly... (grin) Hell, I'd venture to say I'd probably be more comfortable aboard my own little boat, than aboard a lightweight speedster such as this...

sure, we don't yet know what they did, I'm sure one could figure out a way to accomplish something akin to heaving-to with that thing... But, I think we're talking about 2 different reasons for heaving-to in this discussion - one, to simply rest/regroup or whatever, and the other as a result of the decision to stand offshore to avoid closing on a dangerous coastline in darkness... Seems pretty obvious they didn't consider the latter in this event - which seems to me to be very poor seamanship, no matter what sort of boat you're on...

To put it in very simplistic terms, I think one of the key distinctions to consider regarding boats suitable for passagemaking is that between a boat that will take care of you, and a boat that requires a crew to take care of it... To my eye, this boat definitely falls into the latter category, and is gonna make a lot of demands on the crew and autopilot when sailed in heavy seas and weather for a prolonged period...

best regards,

Jon