Weta trimaran, review of the Weta in a racing setting by Richard Gladwell

From the following article submitted to Sail-World by Richard Gladwell

http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/index.cfm?SEID=0&Nid=117472&SRCID=0&ntid=0&tickeruid=0&tickerCID=0

It seems a little hard to believe that it was three and half years ago that I first sailed the Weta, off Takapuna Beach on Auckland’s North Shore.

That day in a 10-12kt sea breeze the Weta was put through her paces, sailing singlehanded.

It was a memorable sail – a few months after BMW Oracle Racing had won the America’s Cup sailing their 120ft wingsailed trimaran.

Having seen the massive trimaran flying her mainhull with relative ease, the obvious objective was to see if the Weta would do the same. Despite several carefully angled runs, and with the Code Zero fully powered up, we never got close.

But it was a great experience to be able to run three sails while sailing singlehanded.

Over the intervening three years, multihulls have become much more mainstream – largely off the back of the AC72’s and the America’s Cup – but what is like to race a Weta single handed?

An invitation to have another test sail soon got upped into a Media Race – competing against Boating New Zealand's Ben Gladwell - nothing quite like keeping it in the family, is there?

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