Did the designers of the VO70...?

[Whitelighter]

...think you could go all the way round with the prevailing winds?

These things are bloody rubbish with the wind any where forward. I have 8.5m/s and am barely making 10knts on what I would consider a fairly relaxed beat.

 

[Victorious]

And no polar.. so we can spend a day or 2 working out just how bad they are.

 

[fireball]

you get the polar in the Sailonline game .... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[flaming]

Unless you can plane upwind (which despite several attempts no keelboat can do) you're never going to get anywhere near the downwind speeds. Sacrificing a knot or so of upwind speed for 10 knots or more of downwind speed seems a good trade off in offshore racing to me, the wind will be behind the beam more than it is ahead of it around the globe I think.

 

[TigaWave]

I sailed an open 60 a few years ago and 9-10knots upwind seemed pretty fast at the time, there were only a couple of maxis that could stay with us.