Trying a Vareo

Lol!

The Vareo kite shape is just plain strange in my opinion. Your better off getting a 100 if you do decide you want a hiking singlehander.. I've sailed both and personally I actively dislike the Vareo. 100 is far comfier :) 

The vareo is a bit heavier than the phantom, but more relevantly, the vareo rig is pretty unsophisticated, wherea the phantom has a highly tweakable carbon rig. The phantom isn't a slouch downwind, and the majority of club courses often won't suit the vareo because it needs longer legs to really get the assy working to its potential.  I took mine out for a short spin yesterday, got the kite up and then quickly ran out of lake.  What I learned is that unless your kite handling is really slick on a smaller lake using the kite won't benefit you much as you'll be spending all your time hoisting and dropping.  Hopefully off to practise a bit today.

The Phantom is wider and far more importantly longer than the Vareo. Sail area makes less difference than most people think, especially spinnakers on slower boats. The issue is that all boats tend to go at a similar speed downwind if the apparent wind is behind the beam. In that situation then the faster the boat goes the less the apparent wind strength and so it requires a lot more power or efficiency to go a little faster.

For boats that are fast enough to sail downwind legs with the apparent wind forward of the beam its another matter of course, but that's another story, and the Vareo isn't in that bracket. To my mind the kite is more there for entertainment value rather than speed round the course, and why not?


Edited by JimC - 25 Nov 13 at 7:43am

In answer to the PY question.
Having had a couple of Vareo's to sail against in my Phantom the main area they lose out on is upwind but then so does the 100.
Regards
Gordon