Instant tacking with no hands (sort of) on my Coromandel

I found on my last sail which started to windward into a choppy sea that Redwing just did not want to tack. Possible reasons are that I was pinching the wind a bit to tight and therefore not get enough speed up to carry me through to the other tack. The other possibility is  she was sheeted in too hard. I have found in the past that she will not answer the helm with the sail sheeted in too far. Of course it may have been a combo of both.

I am still thinking of fitting a deeper rudder next haulout.

One of the great joys of junk rig is short-tacking in flat water into an anchorage or bay.  The wind is often variable, as it bounces off the hills, and sometimes you gain and sometimes you lose, but it doesn't matter.  You just tack, tack and tack again, effortlessly, admiring the view, enjoying the serenity.  Arion has a single cambered sail and I agree with all David says about it.  It is slow out of stays, but once it settles in it picks up nicely and is close-winded.  I have also found my cambered sail to be a terrific ghoster in light winds and flat water.  The boat just keeps on slipping along at a knot or so, even when you can barely feel the wind on your face, and yet still answers the helm and tacks nicely.  I have a few friends with bermudian-rigged boats who are very keen sailors, who hardly ever start their engines, sailing on and off their anchors, but it is rare, and they have to work a lot harder too.  This is one of the great joys of junk sailing for me. 

It is a different story in the open sea on Arion, as the boat is short and heavy.  One has to sail the boat carefully through stays then, picking a smooth patch, and the boat takes even longer to get back in the groove, but then one does not tack that often out there, usually.  I'd like to try sailing on a more weatherly junk one day, a boat like Arne's or Ketil's, but I like Arion's bullet-proof steel hull when I am offshore.  On the rare occasion that I have been headed in open water when there are restrictions forcing me to short-tack, I usually motor-sail these days.  Under bermudian rig, I sailed for 10 years without an inboard engine and was forced to sail the boat everywhere in the open sea.  Sometimes my hands would be red from hauling sheets and the air blue from swearing, and occasionally I'd fail to reach my objective.  Having done my penance, I am now happy to shamelessly motor-sail when it makes life easier and pleasanter.  One of the great joys of sailing a junk-rigged yacht in sheltered waters, as I am mostly doing at the moment, is that you seldom have to.

Can someone venture an opinion on the following?  On a single-handed basis, a bermudan rigged boat is often (always) a pain to tack.  It occurs to me that, on a single-handed basis, a camber-panel junk-rigged boat should be much faster through the tacks than a single-handed bermudan-rigged boat with a big genoa (or, even worse, the two headsails of a cutter).  Is that theory sustained in practice?