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From: Dennis Surtees
Date: 18 Aug 1998
Time: 18:02:46
Remote Name: dynamic47.pm09.mv.best.com
Thanks for your input. I am very interested that such firm opinions are being voiced but I would prefer that you do it with more facts at your disposal. You clearly couldn't see what was actually going on on our boat (a credit I guess to how far in front of you we were!) You have a misconception of what I am actually doing. It is not possible for me to "hike" as you suggest with my knees at the gunwhale. I am flattered that you think that I am capable of doing that. All of my 168 pounds wouldn't make much difference if I did. Before I rigged the boat this way, I would finish a race with backache from the pushing back against the lifelines all the time. Now my buttocks> are tucked over the edge of the boat with no more than mid thigh at the gunwhale at most. I would absolutely agree with you that any more than this would be foolhardy, both from a safety and from a physical or physiological point of view. I do not "hike" in the dinghy or Soling sense at all. I just "sit". There is no strain on my back. I simply couldn't do it. Come and try my boat, this Wednesday if you like, at our beer can. I urge everyone reading this correspondence not to come to a hasty judgement before trying the idea. I think an added point in favor of the straps might be that they could be set at a defined maximum height which would prevent the kind of shananigans that go on in the Etchells(which behavior,I might add, caused me to leave that class afte one year.
As to the slack lifelines, in a YRA sense, it seems to me that slacklifelines are slack lifelines but certainly we might define what we in the Antrim are willing to call "slack".Who is to say that your 9" definition is more correct than mine. In fact, my lifelines support my back VERY well. I rely on them greatly but NOT withoput the safety of the foot straps too.I believe that at a meeting to go over class rules we should define exactly how we would like to see it work.