I had a longish discussion about the various Prindle boats with a man from Performance Cat, and after listening and asking lots of questions, he made a bunch of suggestions that are starting to feel good to me. I'd like to hear feedback and pushback on this, though.



He suggested that I should really get comfortable sailing the boat I have in various conditions, and also get out there and sail lots of different kinds of boats before I buy another. He said I would definitely be better off with a bigger boat in the long run, but I might not know which one without more experience, and it would make more sense to learn to sail well on a Prindle 16 before moving up.



A few notes on specific boats. He said that the Prindle Escape is just a Prindle 18 with a Prindle 16 mast, primarily for rental, where you don't want too much power. He agreed with most of what Wouter said about the Prindle lines, but drew slightly different conclusions. He said that the 18-2 and 19 were just better made boats, and felt they were not really more fragile in the water, except for the daggerboards, which kick up but still might break under certain conditions. On the beach, he said you have to be more careful with them. In the water, he said they were not necessarily more complex, because you just don't use what you don't need. But I think it still might affect setup time quite a bit, right?



He also suggested that I should be less scared of racing - he said most racing is informal and social, that camping and barbecues are involved, and only the top 5 boats need to worry about who wins, so everyone else relaxes and tries to learn from each other.



To me, this sounds like good advice. What do you all think?



Jonathan