From: Brandt Faatz
Sent: August 10, 2015
To: Will Curry – Hydrovane; John Curry; Sarah Curry
Subject: Yes, It Works Great on the Ericson 38

Hi Curry Family,

I promised I’d let you know how my new Hydrovane performed on the passage from Neah Bay to San Francisco. We completed the passage on July 29th, and the HV performed brilliantly. The Ericson 38 is known to be tender and a bit squirrelly in a following sea. I wondered how the HV would handle that. We had some following seas and a lot of quartering seas in wind ranging from 0 to 35 kts. Sure enough, the boat yawed and rolled like a drunken sailor, particularly in the quartering seas, but the HV handled it all with ease. Only once in these conditions did the rudder stall and require hand steering to get it back on course. Performance was flawless in 8 knots of breeze wing-on-wing and broad reaching with the kite. The best fun was the night-time broad reach across a star-lit northerly gale off Cape Mendocino with bioluminescent breaking seas and the vane steering us at a 7+ knot average boat speed, surfing in the high 8’s. (Hull speed is 7.4).

The standard watch log entry followed the format: position Lat/Long, wind X from direction Y, seas Z meters, Hydrovane driving like a champ. The exception was low wind, as expected, but the vane basically worked in any wind we wanted to sail in.

Oh, and I’m glad I chose the A bracket. Sleep was at a premium, and that extra confidence didn’t hurt.

Thanks for a fantastic product and your excellent post-sales support.

Here are two short videos of the Hydrovane in action.

…and a long video: Passage from Neah Bay to San Francisco

Fair winds,

Brandt

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