Test sail a Compass 25
December 5th 2006 17:19
I was lucky enough to get to sail a Compass 25 from Port Stephens to Lake Macquarie a few weeks ago and again for a day on Lake Macquarie. Here is my report on this yacht.
Below decks she has all the gear for a good easy weekend/camping style of yacht. Head room is around 5' 10" and nice and easy to move around. A fully enclosed head and basin, V berth a large 3/4 and a stbd sea berth plus saloon seating/bunks. Galley stove was a gimballed metho job with a sink and cupboards. I did not check out the cooler.
Up top she had an adjustable backstay giving the mast all the bend you can want when racing. All running rigging ran back to the cockpit and despite not having slides on the luff the main can be hauled from the cockpit but needs some persuasion to come all the way back down. We reefed her easily without needing to do more than hook the reef point over the ram's horn from outside the cockpit. If you thought in advance about reefing this could have been done with the Cunningham in the reef point.
Side decks are a bit narrow for a big bloke like me but it is a requiset to give the space below. Similarly the foreeck had some unusual bumps but once used to it not a problem. The keel is not overly deep with about 1.6 meteres needed to float the boat so she can be bought into a lot wharves and creeks denied many other boats. An 8 HP outboard gave her all the power required for motoring. A bimni had been set up over the cockpit and that was a great bonus. Feels more spacious than other bigger boats and I was impressed.
We sailed in a 15 to 20 knot breeze with a #3 and full main. She had a fair bit of weather helm on her large stern hung rudder and despite the traveller being all the way down I had to ease some main sheet as the gusts topped over twenty knots. When I was slow doing this she tended to round up rather than lay over a long way. A nippy little yacht and we will see one day how she races against other yachts.
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