It was not as calm and quiet as it looks, more like 22-28 knots of wind and 2-3 meter waves close hauled. Duende offers an impressive sailing experience and although we constantly got sprayed wet and salty from the waves we couldn't help but smiling and laughing (almost) all the way till we got to St Barts. We didn't want to pressure her too much now in the beginning so we started off with two reefs in the main and a blade. So surprised at how easy this boat is to sail and even singlehanded you can easily maneuver her, didn't know it was so easy to manually tack just one person on such a large boat. And what a powerful boat this is, she reacts at the slightest change of wind and it literally feels like your driving a machine, can't describe it, must show you video one day when we get that rigged. Also what else impressed us was the amazing pointing ability of this vessel, we're basically gaining half of the time on a passage in between eg St Martin-Antigua. That makes a hell of a lot of difference in the end.
Many of you have asked us what boat this is and no its not a S&S but a custom classic Herreshoff from 1971. She was designed, owned (50%), built and raced by Halsey Herreshoff. She was also the winner of many races in between the 70's until today. A beautiful classic which we now will do our best in bringing back to the high standard she was made for.
