Trip to the East Coast and New York

We were invited to American Yacht Club (AMC) for a "demo" weekend of the Rocket 22. The AMC has set up a committee to try and find the next fleet boat for the Long Island Sound area. The committee is headed up by the long time I-14 sailor/ builder Stu Saffer. In one of their early meetings, Drew Shea suggested that they take a look at the new Rocket 22. One thing led to another and Ken and I were on the red eye to Boston.
We also had a little unfinished business to take care of. Last fall we brought a boat out to the Annapolis Boat Show, that was then to be delivered to its proud new owner, Mark Ceres, in NJ but we never had the chance to do the final delivery. Mark graciously let us use his boat for the demos and we got a chance to do a few improvements on his boat that we had worked on over the winter before the demos and the delivery to Jersey.
We picked up our trusty rental steed (a sub compact that became known as the "little S--tbox"!) and away we went on a little sight seeing tour. Our first stop was at Newport RI. From about 3 miles away we saw that there was a rather large sled on the hard and dry. Sure enough, it was "Morning Glory"!

After we picked our jaws off the dock we hopped in our untrusty steed "S--tbox away!!" and left for Forte RTS in Ledyard Conn.
Tony and the gang at Forte welcomed us with open arms (figuratively speaking)! Every time I go to this shop it never ceases to amaze me how they build our carbon fiber masts.We brought the Rocket inside from her winter storage in the back compound and started doing the finishing touches to her. As soon as we arrived it started raining! It rained and rained and by Friday when we drove the Rocket to AMC we were getting pretty sick of the East Coast weather. Just think, in the two trips east, it rained a total of 26ins while we were there.!!

Just as we arrived at the club, it stopped raining!! We got the boat rigged and launched and then had a look around at the club. No wonder it's hailed as one of the top clubs in America, it has it all!! The clubhouse is situated on a point with a magnificent 270 degree view of Long Island Sound and a protected deep water anchorage for the membership. The club has two cranes for dry storage but we decided to use the good old fashioned ramp.
After a demo sail with Drew Shea, Stu Saffer said that he had to go to Seawanahaka Corinthian YC to do some team racing on Long Island and that we should meet him over there. We looked out into the fog and said "where??" He pointed his finger into the fog and said "there". So Ken put some fresh batteries in his GPS and we were off! Two and a half hours later we emerged from the fog at SCYS. We buzzed the fleet of Sonars that were team racing. Meanwhile the breeze started building. We did a couple of demo sails, so by the time we were ready to leave, the wind was a healthy 25-30 kts and the fog had cleared. Stu came down onto the docks and said "Lets see what this boat can do" and off we went for a downwind ride back to AMC. The ride lasted one hour and fifteen minutes and I don't think we went below 12kts except for beating out of the mouth of the club and probably hit the high teens a couple of times. Ken's GPS said 21.6 but we all dismissed it. A pretty good shake down cruise though!

Next day, Stu organized demo sails for the membership and if there was one theme that came out loud and clear it was that they were looking for a boat that both the young and their parents could both enjoy. It had to be a light planing hull, modern in design and build, have the ability to play with the running and standing rigging, yet have a keel boat feel upwind without having to hike hard. They wanted a "little keelboat" not a "big dinghy". I know I'm biased but the Rocket seemed to be a perfect fit!!

That night we said our goodbyes and headed south through NYC to a reservoir in NJ. Next morning we set the boat up for the not so new owner, Mark Ceres. Last time he saw his boat was at the Annapolis Boat Show in October.

So with bags under our eyes, we hopped back in our untrusty steed and said "S--tbox away!" back to Boston and another red eye special!

More Owner Feedback

Jan Arps and his new Rocket "LiftOff" have been getting out most weekends and tearing up the race course on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. We love seeing photos back from owners and hearing how they doing and from the sounds of things Jan and his crew are doing great. Jan's last comments and photos are below.

"The more Mike and I sail the boat, the more we love it. You guys have done a great job in designing a sailor's boat! We raced last weekend short-handed again because of a last-minute crew dropout so with 2 people we couldn't use the chute. But we did very well upwind and held our own downwind reasonably well against the other spinnaker boats."

Rocket Owner Sails on Movistar

Here is a great shot of Rocket owner, Zev Shafran, on board Movistar on Chesapeake Bay as they pulled off an impressive victory in front of an estimated 200,000 spectators last weekend. Zev, from Vancouver BC, was lucky enough to be invited on board Movistar as well as the Volvo Extreme 40 cats. What a fantastic experience!