San Juan 21

San Juan 21 is a great medium-small trailerable sailboat. I like several things about this boat. Most importantly, the way it sails. Light, quick, responsive, and easy. Real easy, very light on the helm, and with the jib, tacking is nearly instantaneous. Upwind, the San Juan is very efficient especially with the jib. I tend to use the jib more than many of my competitors. Part of that may be the quality of my genoa, but even so I think the effective wind range for the genoa is fairly narrow. The upwind/downwind racing that has become somewhat of the norm in the past several years makes the jib and spinnaker combination hard to beat. The jib is small and easy to handle which allows us to soft set the jib and fly the kite above it, and the spinnaker is very effective off the wind. The genoa is perfect between two and six knots (in my opinion) at more wind or less the pointing ability of the jib makes up for the square footage in the genoa. To be fair, if reaching is required, such as in a point to point race, distance racing or possibly even triangles the genoa definitely has its place.

The articles under this heading will be devoted to telling everything I am willing to tell about San Juan 21 racing, rigging, and repairing. I hope they will provide some assistance or at least entertainment to those who read them.

-wb-

Rigged for Racing