Test sailing the new Scandinavian Cruiser 20 in Xiamen, China

by Nis Peter Lorentzen on 29 Dec 2009 It was an emotional experience time to finally watch and test-sail the result of all the hard work, dedication and enthusiasm of the large global team of people who has developed the Scandinavian Cruiser concept over the past two years.


In this video you watch the test sailing of the first Scandinavian Cruiser 20:



I have now been sailing the Scandinavian Cruiser 20 for two warm and sunny days, with light wind of 5-10 knots in Xiamen, China. The water and air temperature was around 25C (80F). I wish sailing could be like this every day!

So how does she sail? - In many ways she feels like a big dinghy, with fast acceleration in a puff, turns on a dime, light on the tiller, etc, but in other ways she is like a keel boat, with good forgiving stability from the deep bulb keel. You benefit from hiking, but you do not need to!

The modern keel and rudder makes her fast - no doubt about it. I sailed upwind next to a J80, pointing 5 degrees higher and going much faster. I started 100 meters behind the J80, and was 100 meters ahead to windward in no time. In all fairness, in light wind the J80 could not reach hull speed, but the SC 20 did easily.

On a reach with the asymmetrical spinnaker she is also fast. She is very easy to jibe by just one person. The high boom, self-tacking jib and GNAV vang (not shown on boat number one) helps a lot. Easy to tack and jibe without getting hit by a boom or vang rope.

We have not tried her in strong wind yet. This is something to look forward to. Being two people on board when the wind picks up will be a big help. Using the trapeze will also be fun.

We believe that we have created a unique new yachting concept, and the early results are certainly encouraging - the boat sails like a dream as you can see.

After the test sailing we made some modifications based on what we learned, and these changes are all completed now, and we have shipped the first boat to Germany for the Dusseldorf Boat Show starting on January 23rd, 2010.

We have five more boats in production at the moment, and we are actually ahead of schedule because of the highly experienced team of boat builders at Red Dragon Yachts in Xiamen, China, so the next five countries including Australia, UK, Norway, Canada, and USA will get their boats a little ahead of schedule.

www.scandinaviancruisers.com