Hi Bert, Sorry to hear about your spinal surgery but I hope it helped. I had done the design for converting the M15 to a Gaff Cutter but was reluctant to actually make the modification for fear of having abominable pointing ability. Frank Durant from Ontario brought his Sun Cat on a weeklong cruise with 8 Montgomery boats. There were 3 or 4 M17s and 3 or 4 M15s. Frank Durant is an extremely good sailor and so were some of the M17 sailors. The Sun Cat was always right up there with the best of the M17s ( we were just cruising but...) Frank and I traded boats for an afternoon. The Sun Cat could actually point as high or higher than the M15. The conditions were 10 kts gusting to 20 kts. The Sun Cat would take on the strong gusts with a slight change in the heeling angle while the M15 was doing it's dinghy thing. In discussing the pointing ability with Frank he enlightened me on the tuneability of the gaff sail. The usual out haul and down haul but it also has the location of the gaff halyard and the gaff out haul which give you far more ability to tune it than the standard M15 rig. If you know what you are doing it can make an amazing difference. Howard Rice believes that the gaff cutter is the best rig for small cruising boats. Paul Garthsides believes that the gaff cutter has a bad rap because they are usually seen on old heavy long keeled boats. Paul believes that if you put a well designed gaff cutter rig on a modern hull that you will be surprised at the performance. Paul designed and built an exquisite little 23 foot gaff cutter for his own use. The Sun Cat's windward performance sealed the deal and I went ahead with the conversion. I am very happy with the performance results. I may have lost a degree or two of pointing ability but this may be due to the skipper and not the rig. I am still learning it's subtleties. Thanks Doug On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 9:23 AM, W David Scobie <wdscobie@yahoo.com> wrote:

selling either of your boats, bert, must be a REALLY hard thing ... both are such well built and well designed craft. hope you are feelng better after going through the surgery.

:: Dave Scobie :: former M15 owner - www.freewebs.com/m15-named-scred :: M17 #375 SWEET PEA - www.m17-375.webs.com :: Sage Marine - www.sagemarine.com

--- On Mon, 3/26/12, Flickasf <flickasf@aol.com> wrote:

...

I just read an old post that you decided to change your rig on your M 15 after sailing Dick's sun cat. This peaked my interest because I am now the owner of sun cat #16, just a few hull number before Dick's.

I was at Havasau in 2011 and 2010 with my 15, Zephyr, and we met in 2011 while eating breakfast. I had not met Dick at the time. Since then he's helped me with my rigging questions as well as giving me an old sail which was much better than the one that came with the cat.

I sold my M 15, and have my Flicka for sale because I had spinal fusion and wanted to avoid future problems if possible.

It's a small world.

Fair winds,

Bert Felton flickasf@aol.com