Review

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Yesterday some friends and I were lucky enough to be invited for a sail on the prototype of the Lightspeed 32. It is 32’ catamaran that will soon be a new one-design class. This all started when I learned about this project here on SA. I was so intrigued I contacted Hunt Stookey, the man behind the project. After e-mailing back and forth I got sucked in to his dream, a new one design boat that will make the most out of typical North East summer conditions and make sailing exciting again. It should be able to: daysail or booze cruise in comfort with your friends and family, move well enough in light air to make it around a race course when the current classes are canceling, sail from Western Long Island Sound to Block Island in time for sunset mudslides at the Oar, and set record breaking elapsed times in the local distance races. It also must be able to do this with fair margin of safety. Pretty ambitious goals!

This boat is not an over-sized beach cat. The first impression you get when you see it is that it is a proper and very modern yacht, or an exquisite piece of carbon fiber sculpture. The boat is Walley or Brenta clean and refined. There are only 2 winches and a few control lines visible in the cockpit. All of the major sail controls are led to multi-part cascading purchase systems that run below the tramps. The outboard engine is housed completely out of sight in a box on a centerline floor that runs fore and aft between the beams. Each hull has proper benches with seat backs. This is a very comfortable place to spend time. There is enough room on the benches alone to seat 10 people with room to spare. Stretching out on the tramps or even on the netting forward of the main beam can also be very comfortable places to take a nap. Jake, 4 years old, had no problem sacking out on the forward netting while we were beating at almost 10 knots. So the boat is definitely capable of entertaining, but can it sail?

The wind on the day we sailed was a little lighter than we had hoped for. We had only 3 or 4 knots of wind when we left the dock and up to11 knots later in the day. Still this gave us taste of what the boat could do. In the early afternoon when we first went out there were several sail boats trying fruitlessly to sail in the light breeze and endless motorboat slop. We however were easily slicing through the chop averaging between 3 and 5 knots of boat speed. Not blindingly fast, but I do not know of any other boat I have sailed on that could have even been able to keep its sails full.

After about a half hour of that we motored out to the mouth of the harbor looking for more wind. We found a light sea breeze trying to get started blowing about 8 knots. We unrolled the spinnaker and were shocked at how the boat just took off. I grabbed for the Garmin to see how fast we were going and saw SOG going from up from 12 to 13 to 14 knots! This is in 7 to 9 knots of wind! There were only some ripples starting to show on the surface of the water. During this time the two kids with us 4 and 15 years old were hanging out on the netting forward of the main beam with no clew as to how fast we were going.  They were not even getting sprayed until we hit a large power boat wake that we just sliced through. That got'em a little wet, but back in the cockpit we were dry and comfy. We were quickly running out of room to fly the chute as the land was approaching fast. Simply enough we furled the chute, no need to take it down, and turned up to a beat. On the beat as we sailed off shore the wind got a little lighter again, say about 6 to 7 knots. In this we able to make about 8 or 9 knots of speed tacking through about 95 degrees. I would imagine the tacking angles would close a bit with more wind, and Stan, a VX 40 veteran sailing with us, confirmed this. After beating for some time it was getting late and it was time to unfurl the chute and back to Newport. We jibed back and forth at roughly the same angles we were tacking through, about 90 degrees, but making about 10 to11 knots of boat speed. Remember the true wind speed is still only about 7 knots. I was driving as we were approaching the entrance to the harbor. The wind started to puff up a little now. It was wild how the boat accelerated in each puff, and it took a little time to get used to radically changing the course to keep up with apparent wind direction. A little puff could change the angle 30 degrees. I had been driving for a while at this point and gave the tillers over to Matt, Jake’s dad. Lucky him because at this point the wind began to build to a puffy 10 to 11 knots. Now the boat was moving! I grabbed for Garmin again and saw in the puffs we were hitting 18+ knots. Stan mentioned that we were flying a hull as well. You would think it would be dramatic, but you could hardly tell aside from a slow gentle heel of about 5 degrees. The boat just went. I keep mentioning grabbing the GPS because it is hard to tell how fast you are going. Every time we would guess, we would be way low of what we were doing. It really is effortless speed. 

The speed is just part of the story. This boat so well behaved, and balanced it is incredible. When you want to bear away, the boat just turns. The bows go down a little, but steers like an F-1 car. You could pull G's if you wanted to. I have been told that this is important in a multihull. Not being able to head off quickly can lead to major control issues. Not a problem here. The rudders are quite large, and difficult to stall. They never did the day we sailed.  The bows will not submerge either. As hard as we tried, we could barley get the water to the half way point. Also, there is no weather or lee helm. The helms are light and balanced but still manage to give great feel and feedback. At any speed we saw, you take your hand off the tiller and the boat just continues on the course you left it. It is also very solid. Going though the chop it felt like one piece. No torquing at all. I have been told this is also important to a multihull.

This is boat that must be sailed. You cannot understand how nice it is by reading a description. Especially if you like sport boats, there is nothing that compares. I have sailed Melges 24’s and 30’s, Viper 830s, Henderson 30’s, and had J/boats well in to the high teens and low 20’s. None of that can compete with what I experienced on the Lightspeed. On top of that, try going for a pleasant sunset sail with your non-sailing friends on one of those boats. Now this boat is not quite a finished project. Hunt and Stan were planning on changing the position of the some of the controls slightly, upgrading the spinnaker winches (even in 11 knots of wind, the spinnaker sheet was bar tight) and adding two halyard/utility winches on the forward beam. I wanted to be more critical about this boat knowing I was going to write this review before the sail, but I honestly can’t find anything to be critical about. The thought and execution that went in to even tiny details is impressive.

I want to thank Hunt Stookey for making this boat a reality and inviting us to sail on it, and Stan Schreyer for chaperoning our sail and showing us the ropes.

In conclusion, to quote Ferris Bueller, “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”

Jamie Ebenau
B30

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