This was our 14th trip to the BVI, all of which have been on Moorings monohulls. While monos are very much a dying bread in the BVI charter world, the 46.3 was a great boat and far and away the best one we’ve sailed down there.

The boat had features that we haven’t encountered on earlier boats. It had twin rudders that were smaller than typical rudders found in a single rudder configuration and were mounted further aft. This seemed to make for some different handling such propwalk not being as much an issue when backing into a slip. Also even when heeled, there was always a rudder deep enough to give good control.

It also had a self-tacking jib which I noticed when were first booked our 2020 charter (back in the fall of 2019) but had totally forgotten about that until we got to the boat and found only a single jib sheet. I’m definitely not a performance sailor so if there was a performance hit because of this type of rigging, it wasn’t apparent to me. The worst part was crew boredom because they weren’t needed to tack.

The boat performed well in the 15 – 20+ knot winds we encountered. We sailed with a reef and full jib when the winds were 20+ and did 7 knots pretty consistently upwind. Heading up to North Sound the winds dropped to the 15 knot range where my son convinced me to shake out the reef and go full main. Of course the winds quickly freshened to over 20 and we were flying. Rail close to the water and speed upwards of 9 knots which is about where I start viewing sailing as more work than fun. Still the boat handled it well with almost no weather helm.

The 46.3 has a generator, A/C, and came with a microwave, coffee maker, blender, toaster and a smart TV. It came with a router but we rented one from Renport which gave us great Internet coverage throughout the trip. We were able to stream the home run derby and all star game with use of a VPN on my laptop.

The only experience I have backing monohulls of this size into a slip is on trips to the BVI so it is always a white knuckle experience for me. This boat had minimal propwalk to contend with and would back pretty straight as long as I maintained a knot or two of speed. The bow thrusters would keep me lined up. At Oil Nut Bay, the wind was about 20 degrees off the bow which really created issues trying to get the bow to come around. We had dock line help to try and get it to pivot off the stern but the thrusters and engine just struggled to bring it around. Finally one of the ONB marina helpers jumped into out dinghy and used it as a tugboat to push the bow to the finger pier.

I'm not sure what the future holds for monohulls to charter, but this model was an excellent addition to the Moorings fleet.