Black Jack is a 63' John Spencer designed plywood ketch. Built in Whangarei NZ in 2004 the McNeill Family have owned her since 2008. After a three and a half year complete rebuild where she was altered from a flush deck, pilot house to a standard cabin with aft cockpit and walk through transom she was relaunched in October 2012 and has become the permanent home of Phil and Helen McNeill and our 3 teenage kids Jamie, Robbie and Holly. Winter 2013 & 2014 have been spent in Fiji and summers in NZ and it is our intention to continue to winter in the Pacific each year until the kids finish high school when we hope to head further afield.

returning to NZ mid October.

Ideally Black Jack likes a beam reach and in these conditions we would expect to average 8 knots in 15 knots breeze.  Flat off we rock and rock, I get seasick and we go slow.  We would only expect to average 6 knots in 15 knots of breeze flat off. We don't go to windward, except with the big steel gennaker.