J/33 SIRIUS sailing with her new X-Drive Carbon main.
Charles Taus bought an X-Drive genoa for his J/33 SIRIUS in 2017 from UK Sailmakers New York and noticed an immediate jump in performance. But during 2018 he noticed that his boat wasn’t keeping up with other boats that had new X-Drive sails. So he bit the bullet and ordered a new main that got delivered in 10 days for two important regattas in August. The following are his glowing comments.
“With the new main I am certain the boat is less tender above 8 knots. We now play with halyard tension in half-inch adjustments and see visible changes in the shape. I did not realize how blown-out my Dacron main was. In comparison, I could never flatten the Dacron sail at all. Similarly, with the Dacron main, the traveler was out of play as an adjustment – I’d drop it all the way down with no effect — except that the sheet was out of reach. I had been using sheet tension to relieve helm. Yesterday I was able to drop the traveler a foot, and kill the weather helm, without dumping main sheet. I didn’t know what I was missing.”
Taus wrote these comments after winning his class in the Governor’s Cup on western Long Island Sound, just outside of New York City.
