Yachting Monthly Magazine

1 May 2014

Ready about… whoops!’ I lurched across the cockpit and bumped my backside on the coaming. ‘Lee ho!’ A nudge of the tiller spun us round on a sixpence and the mainsail powered up again with a thud. ‘Sorry!’ I called to the crew, struggling with the still-flogging headsail as we accelerated out of the tack at a steep angle of heel. My boat-handling skills are always rusty at the start of the season, so my normal routine for a shakedown cruise is to wait for decent weather, hoist the sails and point the bow at the nearest anchorage with a pub. But this year, my ‘re-learning curve’ was steeper than usual: a blustery day in February with YM’s boat tester Graham Snook in a yacht that weighs half as much as mine, with double the sail area (p94). I’ve long admired the sleek Rustler 33, but had written her off as a boy racer’s toy. I was wrong. Like a racing dayboat she’s stiff, fast, agile and fun to sail, but what impressed me most was her steady, comfortable motion as she slipped through choppy seas that would have set most cruising yachts pitching. What’s more, she managed it without flinging spray at the cockpit. A storm ripped through Falmouth that night. The low-profile Rustler didn’t heel much in the gusts, but the superyachts parked just upwind of us were straining at their docklines, bending the pontoon cleats into funny shapes. I lay awake in the little cabin, trying not to think about what would happen if one of these leviathans broke free and drifted down onto us. One week later, Theo Stocker was out in a gale, sailing another long, skinny yacht (p86). From the grin on his face, I’d wager that the 27ft H-Boat delivers a similar sailing experience to the Rustler, and you can buy one for £10,000. We’ve dedicated ten pages of this issue to planning a cruise around the British Isles (p42). Given three months off work, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it in either of those boats. I’d happily accept a cramped cabin for a smooth, fast ride upwind and a narrow tacking angle for nipping around headlands. But as Ken Endean says, people have windsurfed their way around Britain, so any seaworthy yacht can do it. Now’s the time to make it happen. Kieran Flatt, editor