"DSK" wrote in message

Maxprop wrote:
Don't know what to tell you, Doug. I was there, you weren't.

Oh, I'm not calling you a liar at all. It can happen. Beetle Cats
occasionally outsail FDs.

If the C&C was sailing with their sails badly trimmed, and a foul
bottom, the engine running & in reverse gear, towing a partially swamped
dinghy, etc etc then it'd be a piece of cake.

The only penalty the C&C carried was four extra passengers beyond the owner
and his girlfriend--total crew 6; the Bayfield had four. The bottom is
racing smooth (VC-17), the skipper, who took the helm from one of his
passengers when we began to leave him behind is not only competent, he's
done well in club racing events. The engine was not running, the sails are
in excellent shape, and the only thing he was towing was a typical C&C wake.


There are conditions that would favor the Bayfield, such as broad
reaching in heavy air & white sails only...

As I pointed out we were beam reaching in 13 and under, and later broad
reaching in 3-5.

but I doubt that's quite
enough. If both boats were equally well sailed, equally outfitted &
tuned etc etc, then the C&C should be somewhat faster even then... and
much faster most other cases.

. . . which is precisely what we were thinking. Trust me, it surprised us
as much as anyone. We have no explanation as to why the C&C didn't sail out
of sight over the bow. The Bayfield's owner is still scratching his head.
Prior to the C&C joining us on Lake Michigan, we were joking about how he'd
sail circles around us to drive home the point. Never happened.


I've been on both sides of the crab-crusher

The Bayfield is not really a so-called crab crusher. It's a traditional
full-keel cutter ketch of fairly heavy displacement, shallow draft,
relatively narrow beam, and adequate sail area broken up into four parts.
It's very unlike a Baba, Hans Christian, Tayana, or such.

vs modern design equation.
It depends on the boats... some are just plain pigs, and IMHO none of
the Bayfields are... and it depends a LOT on the skippers.

The Bayfield's skipper had been piloting a powerboat since his youth and up
until last year when he bought the Bayfield. The C&C skipper's resume,
beyond what he's done lately, is unknown to me.

The most surprised person in all this was the C&C's owner/skipper. The
people sailing with him as guests have confirmed that he scratched his head
repeatedly during the whole event. He's not the type to get upset, but he
was baffled by what was occurring. The fact is, he only caught us and
passed us once--in the channel when the wind was blocked by dunes. Once out
on the smaller lake, we made up the quarter mile difference, passed him, and
held on to our lead until the narrows. Them's the facts, despite how you
care to spin them.

Not everything can be explained by your apparently cast-in-concrete dogma,
Doug. A modicum of flexibility and belief in the fact that strange things
occasionally happen would go a long way in moderating your outlook on life
and sailing. Then again, perhaps you prefer to see things only in black and
white.

Max