With new sails, sheets, lines, and hardware TLC, the Prindle has really come into her own and is great fun and a FAST sail. She wintered over in the water and has seldom been a week without a ride in the past year. Our self-rescue/righting has been practiced a bit and for this coming winter we will try to locate some dry suits.

These photos are from a mild summer day. With windspeed at 4kts she will reach at 5kts, even overloaded to 460lbs (3 passengers). When the wind kicks up into the 20s... hold on 'cause you are going for a ride! Brandon took these photos of Danielle and me with his waterproof/shockproof olympus camera, great design.




The class main is fully battened and the rigging system of steel halyards secured by socket and strobe provides incredible tension and power without requiring expensive cleats and clutches.

With a set of used sails on-the-way, but weeks away, it was decided that the Prindle 16 couldn't sit through all these windy afternoons. In this way, a scheme was hatched to get the boat sailing immediately using only materials on-hand and $70 worth of line and tape from the hardware store. We built the temporary sails of white, 8mil, PE; folded over polyester line, and secured with carpet and duct tape. Two, PVC battens were secured in pockets on the Main. The Main hoists to plan, along a channel in the mast, and the jib is simply hanked-on with nylon ties. The Marina supervisor and several members of the Percy Priest Yacht Club (ppyc.org) were very helpfull in getting the boat rigged and back in the water. I continue to be pleasantly surprised at the knowledge and generosity of the yacht club members and all the skippers who frequent Hamilton Creek.

The Jib is roughly the to-plan size, though the shape is a bit overly full. The Main also, is roughly proportional, though the luff is 5-6' short in light of the materials used.


Launch day was blowing steady 10-15 with a bit extra in the gusts. Within a few minutes of the first reaches, the Main's PE corners separated from the tack and clew and began creeping inward along the foot-rope toward the ever-expanding belly. Thus blown-out, the sail was still fun off the wind, but climbing back up toward the Marina took a bit of time. The only way to flatten the Main and head up at all was to grab the PE where the clew should be, pull down and to the stern with both hands while driving the (still tillerless) rudders by the crossbar with your foot. By this point, tacking was usually futile and we resorted to heading up and then jibing 240degrees to the opposite board. Even with these shortcomings of sail, one thing was abundantly clear; these boats are fast. The next step is getting the trapeze system operational in time for the production sail's arrival. It is clear that the more powerful Main will necessitate serious hiking-out to keep the hull-bottoms down in a strong wind.

A friend discovered this Prindle 16 anchored to a delapidated trailer in the woods near the Hamilton Creek marina, tracked down the owner, and bought it for a very small sum. I helped my friend haul the cat out and we spent a day scraping and scrubbing the hulls untill they shone. After these photos, I patched, faired, and painted several holes near waterline (none large enough to put a finger in), and one, larger, crush-hole on deck.

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