"...I'm delighted with the boat...the center cockpit is brilliant..."
From Ken Gibson, new owner of Atlantic 48 'Resolute'
April 2011
Hi Chris,
I hope you are well and have enjoyed a great Easter break! I'm just back in Sydney after joining Resolute on the leg across the Pacific from the Galapagos Islands to Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas. Here is a link with some pictures and a video, in case you are interested:
https://sites.google.com/site/resoluteaus/
The bottom line is I'm delighted with the boat. For this particular leg - basically 16 days with steady trade winds on the beam or quarter, it is hard to imagine a more comfortable and practical boat for the trip.
It has been a fantastic experience for me to sail with a couple of very experienced delivery crew members who also - by the time they got to the Galapagos - know the boat very well. I learned a lot! We arrived well rested and could have easily continued. It was a great lesson to meet people arriving in other boats- most had taken another 5 or more days for the same trip, and they looked exhausted....
Of course, the center cockpit is brilliant in these off-the-wind conditions, but that was no surprise. What did grab me was the usefulness of the genoa. We tried the Code Zero a few times, but honestly, the extra size is no substitute for the convenience and robustness of the genoa's furling mechanism. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say I'd rather go straight from genoa to some kind of spinnaker - something with a sock - and forget the complication of setting up the code zero. It makes me wonder why most of the other Atlantic 48s don't have genoas. I also love sailing with the main down. We found that when the wind came aft, we were fastest with the spinnaker and no main. To drop the spinnaker we'd just roll out the genoa to de-power it, then pull down the sock - easy. We found that once the wind came forward, rather than go for the code zero we were better off with either just the genoa, or, the genoa and a reefed main. Of course, we could put everything up, but the extra speed didn't seem worth it most of the time.
Anyway, congratulations on a great design.
Ken