RE: Another Potter page on the Web

Eric Johnson (ej@tx3.com)
Mon, 30 Nov 1998 10:27:00 -0800


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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> > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sdweatherford/Sailing/Sdw
> > sail0.htm
>
> >>>His 'specs' page says it weighs 1400lbs complete. Is that
> realistic? Last
> time I weighed my boat, stripped (no motor or gas tank), only a
> tiny bit of
> gear inside, there was 1780 lbs on the axle, and probably a
> hundred or more
> on the tongue>>>
>
>
> He also says his jib is 52 square feet. I know this is going to
> stir up an
> old hornet's nest, but the jib is 32 square feet and the lapper
> is 67 square
> feet.

I suspect he's getting his numbers from the inaccurate IM brochure. The
current jibs are nowhere near 52 square feet - much closer to 32, as I found
when I bought a jib a year or so ago (and still haven't used it for anything
but testing). I may have been the one to originally stir up the 52-ft-jib
controversy :) I'm not really upset - its nice to have a tiny sail to
balance the boat in severe weather... but its gotta be pretty danged windy
(at least 25 knots) before I would even think of using it.

I haven't measured my lapper. I think the newer boats have jibs with shorter
luffs to accommodate roller furling systems.

> Perhaps the early 1990's boats were made thinner (less epoxy) by a hundred
> pounds? One of these days I'm going to weigh my WWP-19 1985 hull #266.

Run it over a trucker's scale sometime. WhatI do is pull into a weigh
station when it is closed. Typically, out here, the scales are still on and
you can peek through the window to see the readout. I've also pulled into an
open scale when its not busy with truckers and the guys at the scale were
happy to weigh me.