Wharrams are known and designed for their seaworthiness, but one of the spin off benefits of their hull and rig designs is that it turns out they are FAST too! Our sailing  background as wooden monohull cruising sailors meant we were always perfectly happy pootling around at 4-6 knots. It comes as quite an eye opener to find that in a gust of wind Hecate will rapidly accelerate from those mellow cruising speeds to 10, 12, 14, and even 16 knots in the right conditions. (We once clocked her at 21.4 coming up the coast of Portugal in a blow!) OK thats actually way beyond a comfortable cruising speed, but the good thing about that experience was she behaved as well at 20 knots as she does at 6-14 which is our normal expected range. 

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The long vee canoes are effectively like loong keels, meaning Hecate tracks straight, loses very little ground to leeway, and can be sailed to windward without dagger boards. 

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Like most cruisers our preferred point of sail is off the wind for the best speed- buit we were once forced to sail 1000 miles to windward due to Covid restrictions. Hecate got us there in a week... thats good speed in our book!