Sail Extreme tests the X3 sailing dinghy on the Mt Buller ski slopes.

Jim Close, a veteran of four round-the-world yacht races and two America's Cups from Sail Extreme of Williamstown in Victoria, put the award winning X3 sailing dinghy through it's paces on the ski slopes of Mt Buller. ''We wanted to complete our last stage of product development and test the X3 in extreme cold conditions. As the Southern Ocean is a bit out of our reach, we thought that the snow on Mt Buller would be a great durability test for the plastic moulded hull and Mylar sails to simulate the harsh European winter" Close said.

As we drove up the winding road to Mt Buller, I was feeling a little apprehensive thinking about how the boat would steer on the snow and also whether or not we could stealth onto the toboggan run without raising too much attention from officials. With the X3 rigged up in front of the Toboggan Cafe, it wasn't long until many onlookers gathered around including some very confused looking Japanese tourists. As my wife Julie and I pulled the boat up the run for the first time, we realised the advantages of ski tows and skidoos and thought about what it must have been like in the early days of skiing.

At the top of the run looking downwards it felt pretty daunting, but as we pushed off and the boat gathered momentum reality set in. The X3 sped down the run at full pace, rocketing towards the cafe at about 60km/hr, a push on the helm helping to avoid catastrophe at the bottom as we neared the cafe. We were amazed at how easy to steer it was with the custom made snow rudder, and at how stable it seemed. I thought in the back of my mind could this be the beginning of a new sport? Snow sailing.

After a further six runs, all tests were complete and I knew we would sleep well this night after a fun day of X3 snow sailing and poor man's skidoo tows. We look forward to hitting the larger ski slopes of Mt Buller for an X3 snow sailing regatta some time in the near future??.