Ouch!

My comments were about full 18 (or 17) style wings, not little hiking bars, but...

Yes, without your wings your 17 would be hard to keep upright - the sailplan was designed that way.

Your wings, and the 18 wings, weigh significantly more than 5 pounds. The magnum wings add about 40 lbs with tramps to the 18. They catch waves when you fly a hull - it didn't take much to do that.

And, in the "find a way to make your boat go faster than the other guys" mode - if you don't routinely have enough wind to trap from the wings, they're a waste. Simple observation on the 18 shows that trapezing from the hull offers more righting moment than hiking on the wings. Trapping from the wings gives a lot, but is rarely needed with adult sailors (at least on the Chesapeake) - it was fun when it did happen.

So, simple logic pointed to removing them for racing. I dropped the weight too, by the way. But the 30 lbs I lost would have been only 30 lbs and I still would have been dragging the wings around mostly for nothing. So I took 70 lbs off the boat...

Through the years I've done ok in our club racing with and without the wings so I've got no whining to do. But, I did do better without them...

http://berean.org/sc15/awards2001/PHOTOGALLERY.HTML