I've had my first sail boat for 14 months now. I was so naive to sailing it's amazing that I did not try to sail backwards. My best story however is after reading the Monty list and hearing about the rudder being raised on M15s, I could not raise mine. No matter what I did, the rudder would not raise up once one on the stern. I sent an e-mail to Bob asking about this. He said to just "pump" the tiller and the rudder would come up. On my next trip out, I was at the dock (after launching) pumping the tiller like crazy. Yet, nothing happened. I'm sure some non sail boat owners must have thought I was using the tiller to pump out the boat. After a hair raising sail (one of many), I e-mailed Bob again about the rudder not coming up. Bob explained in his reply that some thing must be wrong with the connecting rod to the rudder. I thought connecting rod?! I had just refurb the entire boat. I took every thing apart including the rudder assembly. It was then that I found out I did not have a stock rudder assembly on my M15. One of the past owner did not like the raising feature so he made his own rudder assembly. I also wondered how the pictures of M15s on the Monty site showed people sitting upright in the cockpit while sailing. Yet, I had to duck down most of the time. I sailed like this for about three months. As part of my total refurb, I bought a new main sail to Monty specs. When I hanked on the new loose footed main at the dock, I raised it to the top of mast and found that the foot of the sail was still on the cabin top!!!!! $%*@! The sail shop gave me the wrong size sail!!! After checking every thing out, I found the past owner cut several feet off of the mast. After getting a new mast, I can sail better and sit up in the cockpit. Norm M15 #172