I note that Chairman GGGGG was 6th as a Mirror rep but no Merlin man?
Where was Philip (we had to put up with his speech - why was he not there to represent us)?
- and what was the 'xenon' realy like?
We demand to know

Discovered that Xenon is, or should be, Greek for 'slug'.  The boat performed its function of providing a level playing field for all competitors very well, but is not a racing machine in real life - more of a beach and teaching boat. More refinement needed to make it work properly, but not a complete disaster.  Most interesting feature? Sorting out how to correct lee helm on port and weather helm on starboard!

Will never be a serious competitor to the Merlin.

Looking forward to some real yachting at Blithfield!

GGGGGGG

The mast was prob not vertical (port Starboard, had this in a gp14 once.

You mean you noticed in a GP?

it happened after a windy inlands after several capsizes on the same tack, the shoud streached by 10mm, and yes I could tell the differance, couldn't you??.
Now after every windy event i check the merlin mast to see if it upright.

Possible, Dave, but as far as we could determine it was pretty well upright - the difficulty is that with the boat coming out of a jelly mould, and retaining many of the characteristics of a jelly, finding a suitable point to take as a datum was tricky.  Shrouds were same length to the deck, but when the deck then moves. who can tell, other than to say that the windward deck when under load was always higher than the leeward one, so I doubt that was the issue.

We concluded that the rudder wasn't upright, but even the jelly moulder, sorry, boat builder, couldn't guarantee that the obvious measurement datum points were the same from boat to boat, so we couldn't even verify that.  We would have taken a drill to the boat and remounted them, but the new owners were collecting them on Sunday evening straight from the event, them having been 'race tuned by champions', for which read 'subjected to more rig tension than the designers ever dreamed possible'.  I hope they enjoy their treasures!!

In truth, I doubt many of the other competitors saw the helm balance as a problem - few of us are lucky enough to sail a boat as refined as our class where we become astute to such things.....

GGGGGGG