If he was a youngster again, he would be all over it. ON the 5.2/5.5 SL he always raced either with a youth (older teenager) or female (his wife) as crew. They would have been the prototypical crew for the N17.

I remember the first time we rigged a spinnaker on a 5.2 in his back yard (back in the days before a spin pole). He was really excited. We took it to the lake that weekend and he tied his boat off backward from the dock and hoisted the spinnaker and set it while tied to the dock (fairly light day, obviously). He left it like that all the way through lunch, just to show the monohull guys what he had rigged up.