"Capt. Rob" wrote in message

Hmmmm....seems few others agree with this. Even Loco and Steve have
said the higher pointing boat has the advantage.

Only if the skipper has the knowledge and experience to utilize that
advantage. The art of pointing involves a lot more than simply sailing as
closely to the wind as possible.

VMG across the widest
possible range is what determines perfomance. This is the essense of
sailing performance in fact.

VMG has more to do with the skipper than the boat. Paul Elvstrom proved
that for decades, sailing inferior boats against superior ones with inferior
skippers, and beating them easily.

Wish I'd written that!

What a lofty goal, to be able to coin a phrase suggesting something
blatantly obvious.

For a boat to be
considered high performance it must have excellent windward ability, be
fast off the wind and be stable downwind. A PDQ 36 is only fast off the
wind and not in light air. It MIGHT win a race...so long as the
conditions were pretty specific to it's advantages. My C&C 32 clobbered
a well sailed Gemini even though it was faster downwind.

It is conceivable that some Geminis are owned and sailed by incompetent
people.

Upwind it was
a dead duck, just like Jeff's boat would be. He already wrote that
tacking is tedious!
Get a clue...even a PDQ owner says you're wrong. The PDQ and other cats
like her are fantastic cruising boats for some folks, but sailing
enthusiasts still prefer First series boats, J-Boats, Swans, Swedens

Interesting that you include your boat with such a distinquished list of
yachts. Reminds me of a guy who used to boast that his Cosworth Vega was in
the same league as a Ferrari 248GTSi.

and the rest who comprise the cruiser/racer-racer/cruiser section of
the market. They're just more fun to sail, tack fast and can go upwind.

And your 35s5, compared with similarly-sized cruising boats, is cramped,
lightly constructed, uncomfortable in a seaway, and must be reefed early and
often, not to mention worth a fraction of the value of the cruising boats at
resale time. Everything's relative, Bubbles.

Max