Whoo-hoo – the First Mate and I finally got to trial a Hallberg Rassy 29!
Me an’ the Can Opener got up yesterday at the crack of pre-historic dawn – oh I dunno, ’round about 6am – and hauled our prehistoric butts to the Sherlock Holmes Museum in downtown London.
On a Sunday.
Why?
‘Cause we were off to catch a ride with our new best friend, Cap’n Davie!
Cap’n Davie’s got an HR29 and is another student of the amazing RYA instructor Bernard Mitchell.
Meeting Cap’n Davie
Our newest Cap’n was sitting right outside 221B Baker St, just as planned. We all shook paws and loaded copious amounts of gear and the smoked oyster trolley into his car. Then we turned the bow of Davie’s VW Golf southwest and headed for the Solent.
(We did not need the oyster trolley, Furrball!
We did – you shoulda seen Cap’n Davie’s face light up when I explained what you‘d just dented the back of his seat with…)
Cap’n Davie‘s a big fan of practicing technical moves: heaving to, crew overboard, picking up a mooring… all the good stuff. But this day was a ‘play on the new boat‘ day.
Some of the Hallberg Rassy 29 good stuff
Davie proudly showed us round his ship, from the fancy new windlass at the front to Cedric, the Sea Feather autopilot, at the very stern.
The HR29 has got beautiful lines, loads of space for its length, and a responsive helm. Beautiful teak decks and teak in the cabin below. We could sense immediately that the sail area was just right for solo sailing on a sloop rigged yacht as well – not too much heeling force to overpower us in a blow.
There was about 1 metre (3 feet) of chop on the Solent, 20-30 knots wind, and the HR29 chugged right through it without a drop on the deck. Nice.
We’re going to put the HR 29 on the long list (scroll down to see the long list…).
Hallberg Rassy 29 challenges
Well, it has a fin keel rather than a full keel. We’d really like a full keel for ocean crossing (see our criteria list here).
And we do wonder how we would fit our lifetime of accumulated junk on a 29 foot yacht. We are too used to all the cabin space on the Baltic 35.
Where would we sequester my wig collection? Where my signed original complete works of Tolstoy from the bazaar in Egypt? Where my crystal Pussy Cat Doll figurines? Where would we secrete my Jackie Chan DVD collection?
Guess the Can Opener’s got a lot of scanning and launching of our valuables into cloud computing accounts to do.
The wig collection won’t scan so well, so I’ll put that in the lazarette. Maybe in the grab bag next to the life raft.
Where do you store your wig collections?
–Captain Cat
(transcribed by the Can Opener)
The Cruising Kitty 