Corsair 760R

Speed to burn—and the numbers be damned! By Adam Cort

We’d only been out on Miami’s Biscayne Bay aboard the Corsair 760R a few minutes when Corsair Marine marketing manager Shane Grover and I began bemoaning the fact neither of us had a GPS with which to determine our boatspeed. Moments later, though, we both came to the same conclusion: who the hell cares?

At the time we were ripping our way back and forth under jib and full main in about 14 knots of breeze, and the boat was cookin’. Shane was sitting in the cockpit, and I was well outboard on the windward ama, steering with the help of the tiller extension. Spray was shooting up through the tramp, and we were leaving an impressive rooster tail astern as we chewed up the distance between ourselves and the buoys marking the approach to the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge.

Alas, in these days of Big Data, when anything and everything somehow needs to be quantified if it’s to have meaning, it can be easy to forget what life is really all about, even when you’re out sailing on a fast-as-hell trimaran. So again, I say, who the hell cares? What really matters is that the new Corsair 760R is an absolute gas to sail.

This is all the more so because sailing fast aboard the 760R couldn’t be easier. An evolution of the company’s 760 and 760 “Sport,” the Corsair 760R (“R” for racing, of course) includes such go-fast features as a tall rotating aluminum wing mast (carbon is an option) with high-modulus shrouds and a hull in which the cuddy has been minimized and the cockpit enlarged in the interest of providing room for boathandling and reducing weight. Like the 760 and 760 Sport, the 760R also features longer, more buoyant, wave-piercing amas than the Dash 750, from which all three boats were derived. These improved amas, in turn, promote stability and security when the boat is hard-pressed.

Even in the puffs, I never felt for a moment that we were in danger of spinning out or burying the leeward bow. The helm was, of course, quite sensitive at speed, but the boat also felt like it was sailing on rails. There was little for me to do but enjoy the ride and speculate on how cool we must look from ashore.

Coming about was simplicity itself, and raising and lowering the main also couldn’t have been easier, thanks to the boat’s roller-boom and a set of Spinlock XAS rope clutches on the mast. Sadly, we didn’t have an A-sail aboard to take advantage of the boat’s carbon-fiber sprit. Maybe next time...

The Corsair 760R’s hulls and deck are all vacuum-bagged with a PVC foam core, and the crossbeams are resin-infused with carbonfiber reinforcements in high-stress areas, like the rudders and rudder cases. A retractable daggerboard makes it possible to sail as close to the wind as any monohull, and the rudder blade is retractable. Deck hardware is predominantly Harken—including winches and a mainsheet track spanning the width of the cockpit—and the amas were equipped with a soft anti-skid with an eye toward security when moving around.

Finally, like the rest of the Corsair trimaran line, the 760R features the company’s proprietary folding ama system, which allows you to easily deploy and retract them by hand when trailering or approaching or leaving the dock. It really is incredible how easy it all is, making this great little 24-footer as simple to get on and off the launch ramp as it is fun to sail. s