Beneteau 36.7

The Beneteau 36.7 is a compromise between a race boat and a cruiser. As a pure racer its heavy and primarily aimed as a one design or ratings based racing. That weight is the expensive of a fairly fully featured interior, with three sleeping cabins and a fairly comfortable saloon.

You'll find videos out there of 36.7's surfing at 16knots but more commonly they'll be found at 6-8 knots.

First Sail on Kraken
I'll write more from a personal viewpoint when we've had a chance to play with Kraken but our test sail was with 3 people on board with a 130% baggy cruising genoa and a sad cruising main. We were overpowered at times in the fifteen knot blustery breeze but she drove through the four foot chop, hitting about 7.5 at 50 degrees true and downwind we were running at about 6 to 9 knots (similar average). Better sails, more time trimming, more experience on the helm, a spinnaker etc would all increase those numbers. She was also very fun to sail - responsive to the touch, no hint of rounding up, responding to sails being trimmed, driving through waves.

A Year and a Half Later
I was working pretty hard for most of the first year we owned Kraken so really we've really only been sailing her properly for six months. My first thought as I try and write this is how much I've learnt sailing her and yet how much I feel I have left to learn. This comes through having a boat that responds to tuning, to trim changes, to weight movement and to having a crew (or skipper) that knows what it's doing.

Family Cruising
With two small children we've been doing less family cruising than I hoped. Honestly the cockpit doesn't quite lend itself to family sailing, lines end up in it and access to some of the main control (halyards for instance) is easiest from on top of, or while crowding, the fairly short seats. At the same time it's sufficient and we've done a dozen. One thing that can be done is making sure all racing lines (downhaul, spin halyards etc) go in sheet bags leaving just the other lines in play, and they can be led into the aft cabins through the cabin windows in the well. Another modification I'm going to do this year is adding lee cloths.

Crewed Racing
Our top speed, surfing a wave, has been 11 knots - which felt awesome! Not had a huge amount of wind so far this year but I think there's a lot left as the boat feels super stable and happy at these speeds. Looking forward too the winter and some stronger blows. Upwind in chop with winds > 15 knots the rail becomes quite wet.

Building a crew is interesting. You need to race regularly and work on building a crew list with depth in each position, or really reliable people who don't have a life outside sailing (like me) and don't own or race a boat of their own (not like me). Since our first race in October 2013 we've gone from way behind the back of the fleet to the top half and enjoy mixed racing with similar rated boats and one design races in San Diego. Last night we were racing against Shock35's who rate a little faster and would have won if I hadn't messed up a tack in super light breeze. More practice needed....

While we've got the basic maneuvers down there's still a load too learn, effective roll tacks, higher wind reaching spinnaker drops (stretch and blow), getting gybe sets down so we don't lose a load of time, getting the spinnaker flying well in the super light winds we so often see, surfing in the winds we don't see so much.

Seems like seven people is the comfort spot, with nine being okay in stronger winds. Having said that if you put five people who know what they are doing on the boat I think you could still enjoy buoy racing and this week I was drawing up a plan for buoy racing with three people. We didn't do it but I think in light winds it would be possible, with the right people.

In short I've had a lot of fun with this aspect of the 36.7.

Single handed
This is something I've been working on more and more. Using the wheel lock the boat is easily balanced upwind when you need to be away from the helm. An autopilot is helpful, especially downwind. I've found that in moderate winds I can easily sail the boat both up and down wind. Without a spinnaker I can run a small buoy course, tacking on wind shifts and making a reasonable showing. With the spinnaker I can manage longer trips. It's taken a while to work through gybing and dropping but with the AP's help its not really a problem. Soon I'm going to start working out how to effectively doublehand the boat and I think this will be pretty fun for longer distance point to point races.

The biggest problem I've got with single handing is putting the headsails away neatly, when not sailing with the roller-furler so I tend to just use a furling headsail to avoid flaking.

Learning Trim
This is probably true for all racing boats but I've really found that Kraken rewards better trim and good sailing angles. I'm not sure how close to good trim we're at, getting better in > 4knots of breeze but pretty weak still at the bottom end. While I was a able to sail her right away hundreds of hours on the water later I'm still pushing to learn more about the boat. Get the pole height right rather than almost right and you'll gain a knot and be able to drive deeper. Get the headsail trimmed right and you'll gain a few degrees of pointing. Helm right and you won't lose races (cough cough last night cough cough).

Tuning
With the 367 tuning the rig is part of trimming the sails. Like many other classes there are restrictions on retuning during a race but on Kraken we've started tuning before races and even between races in a regatta. This has been rewarded with a significant improvement in boat speed.

The basic approach is to get the backstay usable, meaning off in the lulls and able to flatten the rig enough in the puffs. Below 10 knots we're generally looking to increase power by straightening the mast, and by reducing the slot between mast and headsail (loose inner stays allowing some side bend to close the slot).

Tensions are tested with a Loose Gauge and once the mast is straight (Kraken's wasn't) changes are kept identical on both sides to keep it in column.

This is all new to me, so it's something I'll write more about when more is known.

I've started putting the things I learn into the blog.

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