Good afternoon friends,....need a little advice on my new love, an '85 P19. Boat is in fantastic shape, and decked out for comfort and distance with a full wing setup. She is a beast of power and speed, and a challenging partner I look forward to attempting to master. I need a couple pieces of advice if someone has the time.
First, the marina I sail out of is dead down wind to the consistent 12 knot winds that blow on the NC coast. The south facing marina is only 100 feet wide or so with boats on all sides. Coming in hot and turning up seems like a recipe for disaster, so we have been attempting to drop the main on the sound, and sail in under the jib, which has worked great a couple of times. The last two times out however, I have destroyed my hands, and pride, nearly the boat, trying to raise that damn main enough to unhook from the mast. Between the waves, wind, mast rotating, etc, I can't get enough force to get it to move. These have been higher wind days, 15 knots or so. One time I blamed it on the old original main, next time out we flew the new sails (Neil Pryde carbon), and I have used Sailkote, and every other trick I can manage. I made a loop in the amsteel halyard and tried using my foot to make it move. No luck. We had to go to shore, get off the boat, raise and unhook and drop the main, and then sail under just the jib back out and around a dock, and into the marina. Is there any trick i'm missing? Since this will happen every time I need a new solution. Can I cleat the halyard to the mast and go easy on the downhaul? That's how the main would be reefed I assume, so why not just stop short of the hook, and cleat off.
Second issue is at speeds above 15 knots the rudders pop due to water resistance. Yesterday we were flying the main only, doing about 12, deployed the jib and took off, within 30 seconds both rudders had independently popped, making the boat a monster to handle and nearly impossible tack. The previous owner glassed over the adjustment bolts for reinforcement,.....is the only solution to buy new rudders and hope the new system works properly? There is a set of MX rudders available, but at $600 its 20% of the boat's cost and hard to justify.
Thank you all for your feedback.
Edited by theblackpearl on Aug 28, 2020 - 03:29 PM.