best skiff

Jus had a word from a friend of mine - he came 12ft sailing in a F5 a while back and was 'scared' apparently! Anywho - he went 18ft skiff sailing at the weekend in a F6, and then a F8 kicked in and they broke the mast foot - the mast went thru the bottom of the boat and it sank - a bit embarassing admidatly, but he said that even that was not as scary as mincing it downwind in the cherub! haha - i had a chuckle at that!

Its gota be tried - 12footers that is! sinking jus really isnt much fun.............

and i have heard the 18 is quite stable downwind but i know the cherub is not

no but ive seen them on grafham though

Originally posted by 5420 i bet its like my 29er

According to the 29er Sailors at my club (as well as my own experience) there are some notable differences...

One of the striking ones is that the angle of no return in a 29er is a lot less than in most Cherubs. I found this out whilst casually sailing one singlehanded and putting a bit much roll in the gybe... At an angle which the Cherub would readily come back from there's water flooding over the 29er gunwhale and stability is reducing rapidly!

I've sailed lots of dinghies and a cat or two.  An observation, the longer a boat is the slower it is at changing direction.  When you are going at speed all that weight up there in the rig produces quite a bit of momentum to overcome if you change direction quickly.  This is good and bad; 1) it makes it dificult to handle a short boat at speed, but 2) if you can, you can bear away on waves and generally react a bit better with the environment.  In other words a short boat is nervous at speed, this is presumably why the 49er seems so serene when blasting along at speeds other boats find hairy.  My Laser4000 comes somewhere in between.  Cats on the other hand handle like very long boats.