Okay, I will put my pride on the line and tell my story. Three years ago I bought a Hobie 18SX and put large sails on it. We drove up to Austin for a two-day distance race. I was somewhat experienced with cats but had very little experience with a high performance machine with large sails. It was blowing pretty good that day, in the high teens, and the start was a downwind start. My problems started long before we got to the racecourse. When I had the sails built I was adding a large square top pentex sail and I went with a pretty large overlapping jib of the same material. At the time I was naive and thought bigger was better. We set off from the ramp at neck breaking speeds. Mistake number two was made, we never cranked any downhaul on or reduced mast rotation. This was an effect of hanging on for dear life and not having the common sense to either A. Realize we were in over our heads or B. Think through the problems and better manage the boat. We are beating to the starting line double trapped when my crew lost his footing and over to windward we went. The boat immediately did a full turtle. Surprisingly, we recovered in pretty short order and headed off to the start line. We are quite early to the start line so we begin reaching back in forth behind the line. The second capsize came due to one of two errors, either I headed up in a gust and sent my crew sliding down the tramp, or he slid down the tramp on his own, regardless, the net result was the same, over we went, again into a full turtle almost immediately. Once again we recovered, but not so fast this time. We were now severely late for the start but that’s okay, we were not finished yet. We needed to tack to get back to the start line but for the life of me we could not pass the eye of the wind. Hindsight being what it is I realize now that the traveler was not centered. My keelboat days got the best of me and I had forgotten that I didn't have the momentum of all that lead to push us through. Finally in frustration I turned very fast into the wind and a tack we did. The only problem was that I caught my crew off guard and the jib back winded. The huge jib took very little time to capsize the boat, which of course led to a full turtle. At this point I was exhausted and just wanted to cry. We were only a few yards from the only part of shore that was not lined with limestone and the wind was blowing us there. We righted the boat to capsize only position and held it there while the wind took us to the shore. Once there we righted the boat, which was hard as hell thanks to the mast being full of water. I had already decided at this point that I was done racing for the day. We soon realized we were more done that we thought. Every carbon batten save two was broke and poking through my almost brand new sail. Once on the beach we doused the sails and began to walk the boat around the perimeter of the lake toward the yacht club. The lake was lined with limestone so it was a real challenge on the ankles and feet to fend the boat off the rocks and make forward progress. At one point in time there was an encounter with a snake that looked as scared as I. The rest of the day was uneventful and the booze helped to build our egos back up. All of the sail damages were puncture wounds in the batten pockets, which were quickly fixed with sail repair tape. The lessons learned from that day are invaluable. I now think through my problems versus trying to just survive them. We now have a 16:1 down haul on the boat. The jib has been sold and a new one added. The replacement is very blade like and I have now added a self-tacker as well. Many attempts to seal the mast were attempted but never successful. The mast has since been replaced with one from a Tiger and turtles are now rare. A pretty embarrassing day, one of many that occurred that first year with the new SX on steroids. We went to almost every race that year and only started in about 2 or 3. We only finished one which was a distance race in light air, I think we took second in that one, but only because of our rating, certainly not because we were superior sailors. Through practice, and asking more experience friends to come out on the boat and show me tricks we now sail very comfortably in higher wind ranges. We are still working on the tactics aspect and consistent driving.