Jochem Visser and his team admitted being slightly nervous and anxious taking her out with so little time on the water in a well establised and compettitive fleet. Jochem commented;" Coming of the start line we quickly realised that we could keep up with most of the substantially bigger boats in this fleet. The boat did not only perform extremely well up wind it did even better on the following run. With winds ranging between 6 and 18 kts over the two days we discovered the Xp 33 has quite an amazing array of "speed tools".
With her high stability we could pick up speed easily upwind and with the use of the jib in-barber system could then convert this into a very high pointing mode or a fast lower mode. It always feels great if you can either point higher then your opponents or go faster." The new Xp33 is focussed on high stability and allround performance with the rudder more forward underneath the hull to improve efficiency. Jochem said " It feels really comfortable to drive. With some boats you struggle to find a balance between too much heel and the need to sail lower to pick up speed. The Xp33 has so much stability that a simple nudge on the tiller to bearaway instantly translates into more speed. With the rudder deep under the hull it creates very good "grip" and I was amazed that it took me less then a one beat to get to know her. I was very suprised how we quite quickly took it for granted that we were sailing boat for boat with those in the fleet 7 feet bigger!"
All in all he was very happy with the boat and his team's performance. " There is still a lot we can do to improve and I'm convinced there is still more untapped potential. I'm really looking forward to next weekend"
Full results here: http://www.warsashspringseries.org.uk/
