Any of you guys have any thoughts to offer on this:
I have a friend with a hobie 17, and he is a little large for the boat......so we stack on more sail. Even though the hulls are a little small, it'll still move. We started with a standard 17 (no jib), and added a jib, and now we are looking at putting a spinnaker on it. I am going to put an F-18 chute on it. Any problems? I thought about adding diamonds to it, but still debating there.
Trey

we added a jib to a climax 18, its a kinda obscure boat, but super super light, anyhow, when we added the jib, if the wind got up to where we consider it fun the hulls would start to flex to the centerline of the boat, anyhow, we had to take an old FJ mast and cut it down to make a crossbar at the front of the hulls. The hobie 17 hulls might have somekind of similar problem. They are alot smaller that the climax hulls, and although heavier I seem to remember someone telling me that had some flex.

I may be completely off base, but thats my only experientce adding foresail too a boat.

Hi Trey,
It sounds like you have only sailed the boat in light winds so far.
Go sail it in stronger winds and on one hull. Sail to windward and close reaching. Take note of the amount of hull height/volume above the waterline at the bow. This is reserve hull volume. This reserve hull volume is the hull volume that will keep the boat from pitchpoling with the spinnaker. If the reserve bow height is only a couple of inches, then forget the spinnaker. On the other hand if it is 6ins to 8ins or more, then the boat might be able to carry a spinnaker. Think of reserve bow height as reserve horsepower. More reserve bow height means the boat/rig can be driven harder by more sail thrust and the boat will go faster. You don't want to end up like that picture on the front page of Catsailor Magazine at this time.
Bill

It's been done before. Check out this thread here.

I guess you missed this pic posteda couple months back. Check it out! Custom sails, H20 spreaders, custom racks off the wings...

Those are my pictures!!! I added an F18 chute to my former H17 and it worked perfectly. However, I never sailed the spi with heavy wind and am not sure if the mast would hold up. On the other hand, I think that if you apply some downhaul and lots of main sheet it should be ok up to 10-15kts...

Tony
Hobie FX One #104
Tony@Hobie17.com