As I mentioned in another post one of the last items we wanted to do to the boat was the DK mod. We wanted to do this because of all the light air we saw cruising Mexico, requiring us to motor much more than we thought we would. We're hoping that this mod would greatly increase our light air performance. Due to boat projects, other issues and the fact we're 60 miles up a ditch we haven't sailed the boat for a year, making us a little rusty.
Our first chance to try out the light air performance was across San Francisco bay to the south bay for the WS rendezvous. We were on a broad reach in 4.5 knts of true wind sailing at 4.1 knts. We sailed all the way rarely seeing anything above 6 knts. We were amazed at how well we were sailing. These are conditions where we would have been motoring in the past We only sailed in higher wind speeds once, but hit hull speed, while hard on the wind. After we get back to sailing we will be attaining hull speed at lower wind speeds.
The difference it made in performance was startling. We will be sailing a lot more now with these changes and can't wait to try our drifter and spinnaker. It was well worth the trouble and expense to make the changes as it has exceeded our expectation.
Jim