At Anchor After a 2nd Trial

Here is Fantasma at anchor. Did I mention the name of the boat? Fantasma. Spanish for ghost or spirit. Kind of a play on the Enigma theme, too.

In this picture she has 270 lbs of water in jugs for ballast. I am thinking this is less effective than more dense, lower sitting ballast of the same weight.

I sailed her again yesterday and this trial was in both light and shifty conditions and in more wind than the prior one. I will say that I would like her to have a wider range of stability than she has at the moment. It is not clear to me that she will recover from a knockdown with this amount of ballast. Mind you I am going to wait until the windows and hatch are in place (hopefully) before pushing the limits in this department. In any case, she stood up well to 15 - 18 knots of breeze and bay chop. Drove up wind well enough with reefed sail plan and even without windows, only a few drops of spray came in through the cutouts. She doesn't seem to throw much water up off her weather bow.

she has a bit of lee helm which is not right, and I have talked with matt about this and actually set up the mast step with this adjustment in mind. I will rake the rig aft a bit and see if that doesn't help her balance out a bit better on the wind. Also, the sheet tends to snag on the rudder when going from starboard to port, so have a small modification to do in that department. All in all, quite happy with her at this point. Just a few bugs to work out. this is why we are doing a prototype.