My son and I started sailing his new-to-us H16 a a month ago on the first warm day here and we are having a blast. He crewed his first race with a friend from Michigan (Thanks again Tim!!!) in the OCRA Regatta, Mar 5-6 and had a blast.

We took his boat out this past weekend in some pretty heave air and had a problem with one of the rudder locks... It wouldn't stay down! I beached the boat and, upon closer inspection, found that the plastic rudder lock was mangled where it is supposed to hook into the rudder casing and hold it down. I removed it from and worked it back into useable shape with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver and it seemed to work ok for the rest of the day.

When we bought the boat, it came with a tacklebox filled with all sorts of spare parts, shackles, plugs, springy things, pins, rivots.. everything and one already busted rudder lock.

Is this a common occurance? Is there something wrong with my rig that makes it prone to eating these plastic parts, or is this just something to keep spares on hand for when they fail? Perhaps I am doing something wrong when locking the rudders down to cause this to happen?

Thanks in advance for your help.

P.S. I am also interested in the history of this boat. I was told it was purchased from the Nationals and has won quite a few titles. Is there a way to resraech the history? It is Sail 903 and bears the name Two Conker :-)