Hi Phill & Scooby,

Your right Phill, on a windy day the boat blows across the lake like I've got an outboard motor mounted on it with the throttle cranked open. DOWNHAUL....ok, now I see. Makes sense. I was out last Thursday and talked some kids out on jetskis into helping me out for a while. I put it over 8 or 9 times and on a couple of occassions the boat started up without my permission and I almost went over again before I got things back under control. The downhaul was pretty snug all day. So point well taken. Thanks

Scooby, I'm with you at least in theory, about going over in strong wind in that I ought to be able to harness it's lifting power under the sail. But I'm going to have to get a little clearer in my mind on Phill's drag shoot first. I just got exhausted trying to swim the mast around and finally had to have one of the kids help me onto the hull. I was really pooped out. Unless the front hulls are headed pretty well into the wind, the mast in most winds, will rapidly end up pointing dead upwind, and any sail showing above the water will be pressed down by that wind. Two things did work. If I'd tipped over where the waves weren't too bad, the jetski driver could fairly safely move to the mast tip and lift it up. As soon as he got it over his head, I could pop it up fast. Otherwise in bigger waves one of the kids would jump off and climb up on the hull and kind of sit in my lap. Then we'd have enough ballast to right it again.

As for getting it up by myself, I Just couldn't do it. But it got me to thinking, as I noticed how hard the wind was hitting the tramp, that there must be a lot more weight somewhere, as Wouter has suggested. I figured if I took the mast and sail and all the rigging off, and could somehow keep the boat up in the air on one hull, that the wind would have blow it back down easily. So there is a heck of a lot more weight hanging out there than I had really considered. Guys like Jake (he's about my weight) and others tell me they've gotten bigger boats back up all by themselves with only a righting line. And several guys sailing F17s on the Great Lakes also say they right their boats by themselves, though I not sure how much they weigh. So I gotta think that with loosening the down haul and maybe a waterbag and then getting out as far as I can on the dagger board, along with maybe a quick novena will pop me up. The dealer told me that the F17 has a long learning curve and it seems to me that the only way to speed that up is to be willing to continually go to the edge until I can anticipate pretty precisly where that point is. In the meantime I figure I'll do a lot of swimming.

As for a righting pole, I sailed an F17 with a carbon pole mounted under the tramp and yikes does that ever smart when you bang your knees on that darn thing when you cross over. And don't hit your ankles on it either. I thought it was about the most uncomfortable thing you could do to a tramp. It does get the boat up though. But it's a lot more, at least it was for me, screwing around and time consuming than I would have thought. I'm either going to have to pork-up, or use a righting bag and/or drag bag and loosen the downhaul, or some use of the other tips before I put one of those things on my boat.

Thanks guys,
Daniel