rick: what a wonderful series of days friday - sunday (may 16-18) have been in seattle. adding to the sunshine is wind (a rare thing in puget sound once the pacific highs settle in for july and august). how i wanted to get SCRED on the water this weekend! my work would not allow me 'out' on friday and saturday ... and then family obligations today (sunday). IF i could have still collected and income AND gone sailing you would have seen SCRED with you at everett! alas ... dave scobie M15 #288 - SCRED (yes i finally named the boat Richard Everett <rick@skyko.com> wrote: On thursday my wife and I took out a 2003 38 foot Dufour and sailed between Shilshole and Edmunds. Boat was not much fun to handle...everything had to be cranked hard, and she seemed quite sluggish in the ~10 to 15 knot winds. Maybe we got her to 7 knots a couple of times, but that was about it. On saturday, we took our M17 to Port of Everett and sailed all the way down around Whidbey Island to Useless Bay and back. Sailing the M17 was MUCH more fun, and in the light to moderate winds (10 to 20 knots) we flew! At one point we were doing 6.8 knots on a close reach, about 20 degree heel...in the little M17! Since we were heading south down the channel (past the Clinton-Mukilteo ferry route) and the tide was coming in, I don't think the current would have been helping us much. At any rate, we did over 15 miles in under 4 hours including a lot of zigzag tacks down the channel ( wind was coming from the south) and didn't touch the motor once. On the way back the winds did some strange things. We would get a strong 1 to 5 minute gust of ice cold winds, then dead calm, then a strong gust of warm wind from another direction. We ended up having to motor back quite a bit to make Port of Everett before dark. Didn't see any Montys Saturday, so if you were there, sorry we missed you. Rick M17 Eidolon