Xp 33 Bon eXemple wins Warsash Spring Series Championships with 9 point lead

The XP 33 on the hunt on the final run of the last race

The XP 33 won the Warsash Spring Series in IRC class 2 with a convincing lead of 9 points. Skipper Jochem Visser praised his team and crew and explained the final weekend performance:

 "On the Saturday we scored a 2,2,2,3 were we narrowly missed the 1st place by a few seconds. We did well but struggled to keep clear lanes on the 4 very short races which were challenged by short venomous shifts. The bigger 40' feet boats La Response and Premier Flair gained points on us. But on Sunday the XP 33 showed her pedigree and all roundness winning both races." Jochem recalls the last race in particular: “The final race was very short and lasted less than 30 minutes. In those short races the big boats can easily sail you back and put some time on you but……..in this case the rolls were nearly reversed as the XP 33 arrived literally bow to bow with them at the top mark”. On the final run the XP 33 excelled and trailed them close on their stern to secure victory in the last race as well.

When we asked Jochem how the XP 33 compared to his X-99, in which he won 2 World titles in the 90’s, he looked up at us like an exited teenager; “The X-99 has been very special to me as I won my 1^st ever World title in her, but she wasn’t an easy boat to sail and needed a lot of skills and a very dedicated crew to sail her fast. The XP 33 has really impressed me, I love to have a tiller again with finger tip control and I really like her clean simple set up and more importantly she sails and performs at a high level really easy. If I think back about my X-99 days and how much we improved season upon season I’m convinced there is much more my team can do with the XP 33. To put it simply; I've fallen in love with the XP 33 and I think she is a weapon”

Full results on the Warsash Spring series here: http://www.warsashspringseries.org.uk/

Xp 33 takes convincing lead in the Warsash spring series championships.

 With only a few hours on the water before the first start, the British Xp 33 BoneXemple, showed impressive performance with a 4,1,1,1,1 scoreline in the heavily contested IRC 2 class.

 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/