The installation on the Pace 17 Tour went smoothly, utilising existing attachment points for most of the fittings and only needing to punch holes for the sail mount and the two jam cleats.
I followed most of Mick's (from Flat Earth Kayak Sails) instructions, apart from the positioning of the jam cleats which I positioned low on the sides of the boat to keep the ropes out of the way of the deck.
As Jon had purchased a sail at the same time for his Taran, we setup both boats together. It took us a bit longer than expected, but we were both happy with the result as was proven by our test paddle today.
There wasn't a lot of wind for the test paddle so we headed off shore to pick up around 10 knots. The sails performed well and the side stays kept the sail nice and upright even when taking wind on the beam. Once I have taken the sail away for a week of paddling, I'll post about the setup in some more detail and go through what worked and what didn't.
The beam wind put some stretch into the new ropes so after 14 kms of sailing we headed back into shore to tighten the fittings before heading home into a head wind (30 kms all up). I had the sail up for the last part of the trip back as you will see in the GPS track - playing with tacking upwind and seeing how close to the wind I could sail.
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