J/111 Cabo Race

(Cabo San Lucas, Mexico or some place north)- The boys on the J/111 INVISIBLE HAND had a good sleigh ride to Cabo once the “normal” breezes finally kicked in after a few days of light air beating. In J/Anarchy, “the Hand’s” owner, Frank Slootman, had some insightful commentary for current and future J/111 owners: “With six crew, I thought the boat was quite manageable. We slept and ate well. Crew (of 6 total) commented how comfortable the boat was. We have a light air #1 head sail that performed very well upwind. The last day when the winds finally became what we were rated for, the sailing was absolutely epic. The boat was continually planing and surfing big waves. We spun out a few times, of course (still learning), but the boat doesn’t broach violently and lay over hard, it is quite easy to get control back. I compared the downhill sailing to deep powder skiing, very gentle. But, the boat was like a dog with a bone, it just wanted to go all the time!! Our downwind speeds most of the time were in the low-mid teens, peaking at 18 knots. We had the A2 (big runner) up most of the time. We put up the A3 (110 sq. meter) kite when breeze started to push past 25 kts on the last night and we were surprised how little speed we sacrificed and the boat was just rock solid in the conditions with that smaller kite. We made up HUGE the last day on the fleet. We were only a good hour out of second overall, which we would have easily made up had the race lasted a few hours longer. It was very apparent from post race chatter that none of this went unnoticed!!”