Latest hardware

We have a crawl around Geoff Ross' new Reichel Pugh 55 Yendys

All the halyards goes through a deflector system before running back below decks to the jammers in the cockpit. The main sheet is the 'German' system, the two ends of the sheet running forward along the boom then down at an angle to the deck before running aft below deck to winches either side of the cockpit. The main halyard can exit on deck for offshore racing or can feed down below when sailing inshore.

The boat has a large hatch and due to the offshore nature of Yendys, this has been designed to be as water tight as possible.

The boom is fitted with spectra lazy jacks. "We ran them last year, not that we did a lot of reefing, but it worked beautifully," says Blanchfield. "It is just getting to the size of boat where you might not need them, and they are handy to have."

Rigging is Tom Hutch's finest PBO from Future Fibres and these attached to built in composite chain plates.

The boat has jib sheet tracks and as mentioned the up and down are controlled hydraulically. While many boats are fitting a smart titanium ring through which the sheet pass on Yendys it appears to be hardened black plastic, which Ratty believes were made by Sydney Rigging. "It is big enough so you can get at least two sheets through there. It seems to work okay."

Oddly, considering that the boat is not built to an IMS minimum cabin top size rule as the TP 52s are, there is a cut out in the cabin top for the inner end of the tracks. "You wouldn’t think your jib will sheet right in there but they do," says our host.