Let me introduce you to Ischnura, a female dragonfly, and the name of this trimaran. She was designed and built in Denmark about ten years ago and now she scuds across coastal waters in the UK.
After one of the wettest Junes the British Summer has turned out rather warmer and drier than usual. Earlier this week I took a train down to Southampton to meet my cousins and some friends of theirs for a day out on the Solent on Ischnura and conditions were perfect to put her through her paces. She is thirty feet long and about twenty wide – a very different experience compared to single hull yachts. In the conditions we had a mono-hull would have reached about six knots, maybe. Ischnura is as like a mono-hull as a thoroughbred racehorse is like a cart horse. As the sails fill she leaps forward and cruises at up to twenty knots leaving a spectacular wake astern. What a beauty.
The sense of speed is exhilarating and there were two other unexpected pluses. First she doesn’t heel over as much as a conventional yacht and secondly there are taut nets linking the two wings to the centre hull. They are like trampolines and quite safe to walk on – or sunbathe on. Down below there is room for at least four to sleep but the hull is quite narrow so it is not spacious. Imagine Bertie Wooster’s Widgeon Seven – not a four-door family saloon.
It is as much fun as it looks but you need to know how to sail a boat like this and things can go wrong. My cousin and his daughter knew what they were doing – my contribution was to mix the pink gins and do the washing-up.
Very glad that you put your Mediterranean steward’s training into good use in the Solent. Presumably not so much ice was required.