I'm new to my C36 mkII and I'm always interested in learning how well it preforms. On Saturday it was clear that Sunday was going to be a nice WNW wind, while Sunday night thru Monday night was going to be 25 to 30 with 8 to 10 ft seas. Seemed like a great opportunity to try the boat in some surfing action.

Sunday I traveled the 45 miles from Milwaukee to Sheboygan, heading north close hauled. Nice sail. Then around 7:00 AM on Monday I headed back south. Wind was 20 with 6'-8' waves near shore, but out about 8 miles or so it got to 25 to 30 with 8' to 10' waves. It was the biggest weather I've been in on the C36 and I was surprised how easy the boat took it. GPS was generally showing peaks of 10 to 12 knots off the tops of the waves, but I did get 13.2 knots on one and 13.4 knots on another one.

All this was solo sailing. I'm really glad I upgraded the boat from the wheel pilot to the X10 below deck linear pilot. I don't think the lower cost pilot would have held on in the rough downwind conditions. With the RF main and RF headsail, I never had to go on deck the whole time. Arrived in Milwaukee at 3:30 PM. It was dead astern if I had headed direct and wing-in-wing would have been tough to maintain, so I tacked downwind. Probably increased my overall distance from 45 miles to nearly 65 miles, but averaging around 7 knots made the miles go by quickly. Very fun Labor Day weekend.

I think I had the only boat that left the harbor that day. Everybody else was circling in the harbor, afraid to go out into the waves.