The 18 does seem to sit deep in the water - the hulls have very little freeboard and the boat is terrible stern dragger. If you race with heavy crew weight the problem is even worse. I usually top 200lbs, and I found that this boat wanted to be lighter no matter what the conditions. Anyway the three rules to make it work were - weight forward, weight forward, weight forward.

If you have conditions that involve any waves, you'll be smacking the tramp and crossbeams, and getting the wonderful hull lip in the water which is drag city.

But... If you keep the weight forward and the rig forward and get the wild thing going you will piss off some other boats. I ran my 18 for quite a few years in our Portsmouth Fleet and took a bunch of trophies home. I only ran the spin the last year I had it. Without the spin there were days when I hung with the local Prindle-19 (no slouch) and others going downwind. In breeze that meant having the crew to leeward at the front crossbeam playing his weight for and aft as the boat needed, and me sitting in the middle of the tramp or back if the wind was up. Really had to pay attention to getting in sync with the waves or you sit on them and go slow - head up to catch the wave crest, head down to surf, head up before you park in the next one.

That having been said, I would not expect to go boat for boat with a 20 unless you have good breeze and flat water. If you're passing H-20s upwind and choking downwind, I believe you have too much mast rake. I could realy feel this - the worst were days when I thought the wind would blow and I'd rake, only to have it go light be left without any downwind speed at all. I even unraked the mast once on the water during a light air race once to undo the pain. Run the mast all the forward. You'll lose some upwind performance, but the downwind will come back to you.

With the spin I found I could roll the faster non-spin boats downwind, and then they'd have to catch me going upwind, only for me to get them again on the next downwind leg. It was a great way to put a slower boat right in the middle of the 5.8s, P-19s and such.

Also - if you're sailing with old sails, get a new set of sails from Hobie at the very least. The new set I got were awesome, really woke the boat up from the old set. If you go non-Hobie get a decent sailmaker and do a flat top. From my experience the after market sails that claimed to be just like stock were not, and in fact had less sail area (I can send some pics to prove that) and different batten configuration.

Also - I've said too many times, but if you have the molded rudders ditch them as fast as can. Even if you are recreational sailing. I can't believe these were ever sold on these boats. You can grab the tip and deflect them by hand. I actually spun the boat out as they flexed under the load of gust going downwind (fortunately it was around a mark and looked pretty cool). The first time I jibed in wind with the new blades I almost threw the crew off the boat - we had never felt the boat carve a turn like that before.