I've finally had a chance to try a new drifter this weekend. Sunday provided the perfect opportunity with light air (5 mph or so) in Boston Harbor. The drifter worked well and I would recommend one to anyone with hank on sails for those light air days. I was considering a cruising spinnaker, and consulted with a sailmaker that I know. After understanding my needs, he suggested a drifter. It would provide reasonable down wind performance -- not as good as a spinnaker or cruising spinnaker, but much better than what I have -- and be useable to a close reach in upto about 8 mph of wind. Best of all it would simply replace my jib and be considerably less $$ than a cruising spinakker, and be easily managed single handed. My needs: a light air sail that can be used single handed for as broad a range of points of sail as possible, and require as little additional hardware to be installed as possible. I have the standard hank on jib (no roller furler), so the jib can be easily replaced with an alternate based on conditions. What is a drifter, you ask? Basically a large genoa made from light sail cloth. The one I have overlaps the main by about 50% when close hauled. It hanks on instead of the jib. For my first run I simply ran the sheets back around the lower, forward part of the stern rail port and starboard, then up to their respective winches and cleats. I could add a couple of stern rail mounted blocks and be done with it, but, as I learned from my trial run (and was suggested by the sail maker), better sail shape for different points of sail would be realized if I can add a genoa track and adjustable block along the hull/deck lip. The results were that I could point almost as high as normal, but got better boat speed by falling off about 5 degrees. The boat was moving right along with those pleasant gurgling sounds from the stern -- in 5 mph wind. The boat had enough power to make it over the large boat wakes instead of stalling and bobbing around like a helpless cork. On a beam reach, it worked ok, but the top of the sail twisted off to a luff. By manually holding the sheet down and forward, better sail shape was acheived, so I think that a genoa track will help. With the wind off the aft quarter, sailing up high enough to prevent the main from blanketing the foresail, worked very well. Down wind wing-and-wing worked well, too. This has changed my mind about genoa's on these boats -- which I thought was not a good option. However, With a geno track on the rail, a 20% or so genoa would probably work well, and on a roller furler you could probably get pretty good sail shape down to about 100%. Fair winds, Tom