We bought our M17 in November 2013 and moor and sail summers on Rimrock Reservoir, 40 miles west of Yakima, WA. Over the years we have had several other boats and sailed many other NW waters.Our M17 is just right for us now. Rimrock is a beautiful setting in the Cascade mountains, but winds are usually 20-30+ mph and gusty. Most of our sailing is with one or two reefs and a storm jib. Our first season on Rimrock we had a Elliot Pattison 135 with foam luff on a CDI furler. This was way too much sail and even with the foam luff it roller reefed poorly. Second season we downsized to a 109 with foam luff on the furler; this was still too much sail for many days and also roller reefed poorly. So we added a solent stay and a storm jib. This works good for us and would be a good addition to any small boat that sails in heavy wind. The solent stay, and some other changes in rigging and trailer are described with photos below in Tech and Projects.

We have also assembled 10 pages of generic information for M17s. This can be found at this websites' Information tab /Technical Documents/Technical Guides/M17 Rigging Dimensions and Measurements. We hope other owners will benefit from the info there.

Previous sailboats: Harpoon 5.2, Tanzer 22, Catalina 30, Monty 15, Point Defiance 12.
Previous waters:
1979-1983 Most lakes near Klamath Falls, Medford and Bend, OR.
1984-2011 Puget Sound.