Hello all, as I said earlier on, I acquired about 2 weeks ago "Hobbit", a 1982 M-17. After sailing her four times now, I would like some help in deciding on some things, and I would really appreciate people's opinion on the main question below. Sorry if this message is a bit longish.
Until buying the M-17, I owned (and still own) a Compac 16. Originally I intended on selling the C-16, but now I have doubts. The trouble is that it seems that the C-16 fits for absolutely everything we need to do with it, while the M-17 is a bit more problematic (see below). But the C-16 doesn't sail well, and that is my biggest gripe with it... We are a family of four, myself, my wife, and two kids ages 6 and 4. As such, not too much time is available, and the kids are not the world's best example of patience (both of these may improve in the future). We sail mostly on the lakes in Madison, WI; they are inland lakes, the largest of which is about 5-6 miles across. I would hope that in the future we'll take some trips to the great lakes (Green Bay or Apostle Islands) but so far we haven't done this. With the Compac, the routine is fairly simple: the boat stays in a parking lot 1/4 mile from the launching ramp; I attach it to the car, drive to the ramp, rig by myself, launch. If the kids come with me, they play around while I rig. The whole routine takes about 25 minutes (so the kids don't get too bored). If this happens in the afternoon, all of us then sail for about 2-3 hours, and when we're done my wife takes the kids home and I de-rig by myself, another 25 minutes. If we start at 5pm, we're all home by around 9. With the Monty things are a bit more complicated. Admittedly I am not yet quite up to speed in rigging it, but today's example seems to be the norm. I arrived at the boat at 9:45am, rigged alone till 11, sailed until 2:15, derigged and put the boat away until 3:30. So I got 3 hours of sailing for two-and-a-half hours of rigging. Not a very good ratio in my opinion. The one time I took my wife and kids the rigging took just enough for the kids to get thoroughly bored and to start pestering us enough to get us angry :-( And the worst part of it is that after an hour of rigging, I am ready to go home and get in bed :-) I can see now a number of options to improve on this. Option one: keep the M-17 moored. Obviously that would reduce the rigging time to something very small. The cost of this is not negligible, though (I expect to pay around $800/summer for a mooring). However I have no experience with bottom paint, and the Monty's bottom has never been painted. (It is clean as it came from the factory.) How often does the bottom need painting? Every year, or can it be skipped a year or two? How big a hassle is this? Is it a pity to "dirty" the bottom of a clean Monty? Option two: keep the Monty with the mast up on the trailer, near a marina. This would be OK, except for the fact that the only marina that provides this service is on the other side of the lake, a 30 minute drive, and at the end of a long channel which takes 20 minuntes to motor through. And the cost is about the same, around $800-1000/ summer. Option three: create a fleet -- keep both boats. When in a hurry, sail the C-16, when time is not an issue or need more space, sail the Monty (space may or may not be so much of an issue on the C-16: we have sailed her with 4 adults, 5 kids, and a dog on board; we were a bit cramped, but we managed. The only time the Monty would be really better would be if I were to go camping with the kids; my wife swore that she would not sleep in any small sized boat.) Wife may not be too happy with this option Option four: sell both boats and get an M-15. The question is how much space there is on an M-15 versus the C-16? Would 4 adults sit comfortably in the cockpit of the M-15? It would really help if I could find someone with an M-15 somewhere in my general area (Madison, Wi), so I could look at it and perhaps sail together to get a feel for the boat. Option five: keep only the M-17, and hope to improve my rigging system. Right now I raise the mast with the system suggested on Bob's website (with a 4-part and a padeye on the mast support), which works great but still takes a lot of time. The rudder cannot stay on the boat (the rear mast support goes in its place), rolling the mast back is complicated by the spreaders, bending the mainsail on the boom is a pain, etc. Anyone has any special tricks to speed things up? Option six: keep only the C-16 (sad), and in a few years, when kids (and maybe wife?) are more patient, get another M-17. I am worried about the fact that I have read about quite a few people who after owning a Monty were never happy with anything else, so kept buying them. Since a good one is hard to find (and the one I have is good), I am not very inclined to become Monty-less. What do people who've seen more of all these kinds of boats think about all this? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Andrei. _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
