Sailing on board the Abaco Rage

Based in Hopetown the iconic Rage is the symbol of sailing in the Abacos and is a Class A Bahamian sloop. In its heyday it raced all over Bahamas but Rage has now retired and stays in the Abacos 28ft long, it was built on Man O War Cay in 1980, has a 62ft mast and incredible 38ft long boom. The mainsheet blocks line up with the transom, despite appearances it doesn't have a centre mainsheet! You can see it sailing in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpKz2_51iZ8 and see here https://abacorage.wordpress.com/ for more details on the Sloop class and the Rage. I was lucky enough to be invited out for a race last week. Fortunately we had a hot day with bright sun, and ideal winds of 5-10 knots. There were fifteen on board - four to sail the boat, the rest of us were moveable ballast. For there are three sliding seats, or prys, which each hold up to three crew. Rage sails best with the gunwale just on the water. It's hard enough to keep it balanced sailing to windward, but becomes really tricky when running. One person moving from side to side was enough to roll the boat from boom under water (real slow!) to boom high (also slow) Because the boom is so long, gybing is a nightmare in any wind, it calls for careful planning and a lot of co-ordination, especially with 15 on board and, as you can see, a very low boom. After a gybe the weight of boom combined with its length has huge momentum and the boat would really rock and roll so the crew had to move carefully to balance it out and reduce the roll. Just as one would in a dinghy, but on a huge scale. Rage is fast offwind, and hangs in there to windward in light winds. 10 knots wind is the maximum for optimum performance, any more than that and it falls over and the resulting strong weather helm kills any speed. All in all it was a great day out, with much laughter and a fair bit of drinking. Oh, and we won the race!