AZCat - little further info on yer boat. Last spring when I was thinking real hard about buying that boat I had made some inquiries about some upgrades.

One of the things was to add width to the beam of the boat. As noted earlier in the thread there was a 5.8 in our yard that was stretched to a 6.0 and the beam was widened from 8' to 9"3". I was thinking 10' My purpose for this was two fold; the boat wouldn't heal as fast making for a better family platform, give more tramp area making the deck cleaner, but also to exploit the sail plan - think Tornado!!!! There will be some argument on this, but then again this is a personal preference.

The other thing I thought about was doubling up on the diamond wires as earlier mentioned and recommended by Lee Wickland. In doing that I would also going to a heavier wire for the diamonds. My thinking the same width that was used for shrouds. I upgraded the width of the wires with my 5.8 and and honked down to a 1.5" pre-bend and this seemed to have stiffened things up a little - so it seemed. I can't understand why NACRA didn't go to the thicker extrusion. My 5.8 had a "noodle mast" too and is use to bug the daylights out of me. Funny Prindle mast are pretty stout, and my 18-2 mas is a solid as a rock.

I had also looked at about upgrading the spinnaker system to the Inter 20 style snuffer.

The last thing I was thinking about was a square top, but that would have been only after I had thrashed the original sail; which would have been in a few years.

To get the hardware for the beams, mast, and spinnaker snuffer etc... you're looking at about $3K

I know you don't want to turn this into a $10K boat, but!!!!!!