Re: p19

GSTahoe@aol.com
Wed, 28 Jul 1999 17:07:07 EDT


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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In a message dated 7/28/99 12:37:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
freelanc@execpc.com writes:

<< I feel on a small inland lake I'd enjoy a WWPotter15, but on Lake
Michigan
it wouldn't be fun to turtle with our sudden changes wind and cold waters. >>

Granted there's more room on a P-19, although that makes it difficult to fit
in most garages. The P-19 may take a little longer to rig and cost a little
more to maintain, but why in the world would you want to turtle a P-15? I
haven't sailed Lake Michigan, but I assure you I have no plans in the near
future of turtleing on Lake Tahoe. The winds here usually are gusty from
about 10 to 30 MPH in the afternoon (except this year) from just about every
direction possible, including up and down. The water temp away from shore is
about 47 to 55 degrees during the summer. Cold enough to make a man's voice
sound like a girl's! Sorry, Judy and Michele--I suppose it would make a
ladies voice kind of weird too, but I wouldn't know :-)

There are a lot of advantages of a P-19 over a P-15 as well as quite a few
advantages of a P-15 over a P-19. Turtleing should not be an issue in either
case as long as the boat is handled in a prudent and safe manner. That is up
to the skipper a lot more than the weather or water surface.

Lately there seems to be a lot of discussion about the possibility of
knockdowns. If you go back and look at the description of any of these
events, the operators of the crafts were doing something, and in most cases
more than one something, that precipitated disaster. When the weather is
rough, you don't stand on the cabin top or take a stroll to the foredeck--you
can feel how tipsy that makes the boat. Why do it? You don't leave your
centerboard or swing keel up. That not only makes the boat unstable, but it
will sideslip through the water, virtually impossible to steer and causes it
to roll and yaw nauseatingly. Why do it? I hear people say they "forgot" to
put down the board. I do not see how you can do that. The Potter then feels
more like a canoe than a sailboat with the board up.

Most of these statements have been made by people who have never had a
knockdown and many are made by P-19 owner's talking about P-15's. This has
created fear in a few of our newer sailors, a fear that is totally unfounded.
I believe that a few years ago a few members of this group tried to put this
subject to rest by testing and intentionally trying to knockdown their boats.
I cannot remember off hand what the results where.

Comments? (Please don't say those folks never got their boats back up! :-)

Now, I'll get off my soapbox and get back to trying to keep track of
everybody coming to Lake Tahoe for our sail to Emerald Bay. If you still
haven't RSVP'd yet, please don't forget. We need: Day of arrival, boat name
and type, your name and type and how many for dinner Friday night.

Geoff
P-15 Lollipop
N. Lake Tahoe, NV