My wife and I plus three kids just got back from a BVI trip that spanned July 5 through 15. I'm intending here to write up our experiences with the boat in hopes it might be of interest to future bareboaters.
We picked up "Steele the Wind" (STW), a Jeanneau 50DS, from CYOA in CA on July 5. We sailed her through a variety of conditions - half of which was with some pretty good winds until tropical storm Chantal blew through after which we had very light winds. We had a chance to sail her in various conditions as well as handle her under motor.
This was our fourth charter in the BVI. Our previous largest boat we've sailed was 44ft. So on paper STW is "only" 6 feet larger. But that 6 ft is a big difference.
Let me start below deck. You can view the boat plan on CYOA's web site. The master cabin is spacious and the forward cabins are a bit tighter that I expected. There is plenty of storage everywhere.
The galley is well laid out and equipped. The fridge was top loading and had plenty of space. It also has a side door which is convenient to be able to pull stuff out of the bottom of the fridge without having to empty out all of the bins from the top.
The freezer is a nice size. We were able to provision in CA for all of the meat and frozen veggies and other stuff and still stuff three bags of ice in the freezer.
The boat has a generator and AC. All great stuff. No comment on if AC is "necessary" or not in the BVI. Personally I like it.
The DS layout gives great light down below. But it also creates two annoyances. First, there are a couple of up/down steps. One by the galley and one in the master cabin. I can't begin to tell you how many times I stubbed a tow. Second, the boat has somewhat marginal ventilation. One hatch only in the main cabin.
There is a flat screen on the main cabin. But does not work. There is another flat screen in the master cabin which works fine. We had "movie night" with popcorn and candy.
The audio system works fine and includes a input jack to plug in a mp3 player. The system is complex (IMHO) and takes some fiddling to get to work. We were never able to get the cockpit speakers to work. I don't know if this was due to not being able to decipher the audio controls or if they just don't work.
The cockpit is roomy with plenty of room for six to eight people. I was wishing the cockpit table was a tad bigger as it was a tight squeeze for the five of us to eat dinner.
Chart plotter is the center position and swivels left or right as needed. Standard issue Raymarine.
The rest of the instrument layout was, IMHO, somewhat annoying. The engine controls are on the port side along with the bow thrusters and auto pilot. The starboard side has wind and tri-data. For me this is annoying since I like to use the wind data to put the boat up against the wind to bring out the main sail and then punch on the auto pilot. But having the auto pilot on one side and the wind data on the other makes this more clunky than it should be. I guess it's just different than what I've become accustomed to....
The water depth gauge was supposedly set for feet under the keel. After a dive check I discovered it was off by about two feet. So the water depth was really the reading plus 5.5 feet (the draft on STW) plus 2 feet. I do NOT like my water depth reading to be water under the boat. It's just so non-intuitive to me. The depth should just be the depth. Thus when you go to anchor it's easy to figure out how much rode to let out. But this is obviously a personal preference so I by no means hold this against the boat (other than the fact the gauge was off by nearly two feet....)
STW has a furling main. It worked flawlessly and fairly easy to unfurl and more importantly to roll back in. This is how a furling main is supposed to work!
The jib is of course also furling. Standard issue and worked great.
I appreciated three reef marks on both sails.
STW has an anchor that is just enormous. Happily the electric windlass dealt with it just fine. If you get this anchor set you can sleep well at night 'cause it's not going anywhere.
Under all sailing conditions this is a fast boat. We were double reefed heading up to Anegada in 20+ knot winds and averaged a little over 8 knots. It's the fastest North Sound to Anegada trip we've had - I think the total trip time was 1.5 hours. We were heeled a bit but nothing uncomfortable - my "crew" was chilling with a book. See youtube video here when we were still going "slow":
Sail to Anegada Under light wind conditions the boat also does well.
In downwind light wind conditions we found just running with the jib was just as effective as jib+main.
The boat will motor at 8 knots at cruising rpm.
The ride is really very smooth. I suppose that's one of the benefits to a large heavy monohull.
One annoying thing with this boat is that she is creaky under rolling conditions. And there is nothing you can do to get rid of the noise. It's like the floor and door panels are rubbing up against each other. Creak, creak, creak... all night long if we were in a rolly anchorage (which we unfortunately found ourselves in twice on this charter). Earplugs are your friend!
CYOA is a great place to charter. The crew does a great job briefing you on the boat and they seem to know their stuff very well. And of course you don't have to ride an expensive, often cancelled, and stinky ferry boat. Just sail on out of the the harbor.
Would I charter STW again? Yes and no. Yes if I needed a boat that big or if a smaller boat was not available. But I don't really need a boat this big and were perfectly comfortable in the smaller boat. But that's of course not STW's fault. If you're looking for a comfortable 50 ft boat this is a good one to consider for many reasons. She's got some quirks but don't they all?
If anyone needs any other information please feel free to PM me.
