Blue Peter Sailing Dinghy - Sailing Experience
The Blue Peter;
Our experience has been really positive. It's a small boat, yet large enough that with 120Kg of crew weight, it still moves (albeit slower) - perfect for teaching a young child.
With the centre main conversion, a major positive is that the boat can be a starter boat before moving onto something that feels less safe such as a topper (because you're not sat inside something not on-top) while providing the practice with the helm. Presumably this is why the Optimist or 'Oppie' is the shape it is too.
The boat is very nippy with just a child in it, with 8-10kmh winds it really zips about. Gusts are something that bring instant acceleration which can be fun/scary depending on the outlook of the crew at that point. We had a couple of instances where my son was scared by the sudden turn of speed the boat took (think electric car level acceleration).
We've yet to manage to capsize the boat while sailing it - the high sides mean that it really can be blown almost over before getting any water in and we've found even in higher winds that the sail spills the air sufficiently that the boat doesn't start to take on water.
Like an Oppie, if it did capsize, total inversion would be surprising (I think you'd really really have to be trying hard to invert this boat). In event of it taking on water (we tested a capsize), on righting the boat, you end up with about 15cm of water in the bottom, so if away from shore, you might want a bailer in case (though it sails fine with the water in)).
The only negative we've found with the boat is this; if you reef the sail heavily (and or) are in very light wind, tacking and gybing can be mushy as the boat has a pronounced weathercock effect due to the high sides. This can be frustrating if you are on a lake with rapidly changing wind directions. It is something I recall from learning to sail on a Laser Pico as an adult, but the weathercock effect is greater and it is very irritating. To rectify, you need to ensure forward momentum is not lost - typically by not tacking so close to the wind, but also by reducing the furling by a turn or two around the mast. To be completely fair to the boat, we reefed this to within an inch of its life - it was like a handkerchief - clearly it isn't designed to be sailed like this and doing so totally changes the centre of pressure.
Check out the photo - I can't recall the wind speed, but it's on an inland lake. Perhaps 12kmh? We're really going some here, but if I weren't on board, the boat would really be flying.
In short, it looks a little like an Oppie, but it has nothing in common performance-wise with an Oppie so far as I could tell - an amazing little boat (with oar locks for calm days).
We've had 6 children on this boat with paddles for a birthday, and that was great fun too.
