Hello Everyone!
New member here, but I've been the proud owner of a show-room-quality 1984 hobie 18 for several years now, and sail her for a month or two every year off pawley's island, SC. I bought her from an old retired gentleman up in Michigan, who was the original owner and garage-kept her when he wasn't puttering around the little lake on his property. He even had all his recipts and paperwork from 1984! The boat is in amazing condition, no soft spots at all, spotless original tramp, the whole deal.
Fast forward to May of 2020, I went down to Saint Simons Island to sail with the Surf Sailers beach-cat club there, and an old salt offered me up a pair of SX wings for 200$ to get em out of his yard. Obviously, I jumped on that. I have all the hardware for it, and I've since installed in on the boat. But then I realized I have a redline hobie, made in June of 1984. I attempted to do the fiberglass repair on the forward crossbars, but man its tight in there! I very quickly realized I was in no position to do that fix easily. I did a bit of searching on these forums, and found a few threads on it, but all the images have lost their domain and thus the descriptions without the photos are pretty vague.
Does anyone here have any idea how to easily do that fiberglass install? Any tips or tricks, or photos? I'm highly considering letting a fiberglass shop do the fix, but I have no idea how much that will cost. Unfortunately, the hardware with the wings did not include an extra 4 reinforcement plates for the crossbars so I don't have those either. If I sailed in winds under 10 or 15 knots and did so carefully, could I safely sail without those reinforcements until the end of the season?
Any information would be so appreciated, I did my research on here but I'm still a little dubious!
(Here she is off Pawley's Island last summer!)
