Thanks everybody for the suggestions of places to sail in southern California. I'm going to check out Lake Isabella this Thursday, and some of the other locations later. Maybe on one of my outings I'll run into another Montgomery, or two. I'm retired, so I try to do most of my sailing on weekdays, and leave the weekend water to the working stiffs. As for the fender problem, my main problem is that since I don't have cabin top handrails, there wasn't a really convenient place to hang fenders so the widest part of the boat was protected by a fender. Connie's idea of the fender board, in combination with Doug's idea of a shackle through the chain plate hole sounds like a good solution. If I combine the fenders into the sausage, I should be able to cover all of the area that needs to be protected. I'll get the extra shackles I need, and install them in the locations you mentioned, and that should give me the fender hanging points I've been lacking. Thanks Gary, Mark, Larry, and anyone else I missed for the good ideas for fenders and sailing locations. Probably next month, I'll head for my old stomping grounds in the delta for a multi-day trip. I'll launch at Tower Park Marina, where they lower your entire trailer and boat into the water on an elevator. They then raise the trailer again for you to hook back up to with your tow vehicle. The only problem is overhead wires blocking the driveways to the top of the levy, where the elevator is. That's where I learned to rig my boat in a hurry, just before backing onto the elevator.
From there, one of my favorite places to sail, is to Lost Isle, where there is a really nice restaurant, and a large dance floor. They barge a band out there on weekends for dancing music. After dancing, there are shower facilities and scores of guest docks for overnighting. I'm hoping it hasn't changed too much since I was there last.
Happy sailing, Bill "C" Day M-15 363 "Gee Whiz!"