From: William Wickman
Subject: XT-Vane performance
Date: March 5, 2016
To: Hydrovane International Marine

Hi John, Hi Will,

We’re in Bonaire after completing the Atlantic crossing to St. Lucia and then the 450nm trip to this nice island. I thought you might be interested in my impressions of the XT-Vane which we used exclusively during the voyages other than when we were motoring.

I was very pleased! In any conditions in which we chose to sail the vane responded quite well. During most of this roughly 3500nm we had 15-20 knots from nearly astern and I used the vane only slightly extended and with the rudder set to the most sensitive and least powerful position (all the way left) and this worked very well, maybe better than the stubby or standard vane would have worked. In the really light air I extended the vane all the way if the wind was well aft and as far as I could without banging into the arch if we were a little off the wind. IMHO this was a big improvement over the past vanes. At no time did the vane fail to respond adequately to any winds in which we chose to sail. I would say that the vane was effective in relative winds down to five knots, maybe less. So I don’t know how much more powerful the XT vane really is but to me it seemed significantly better for our boat. We never had any winds forward of the beam so how it works going to weather I cannot say but I’d be surprised if there were any problems.

Give our blog a visit at: airstreamvoyages.blogspot.com and go back a couple posts and you’ll read about the Atlantic and Bonaire passages.

Hope you’re all doing very well.

Bill & Janet Wickman
SV Airstream