1984 Hobie Redline boat- installing wings. Any tips?

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!)

Those shroud anchor plates are critical, especially at the front cross bars.
See if you can find a 'parts' boat anywhere....or try on this Forum.
The rear cross bar plates are less critical, unless you hike out in high wings and heavy chop.

For the fibreglass repair/upgrade, it is best to turn the boat upside down, and you may want to take the boat apart and work on each hull.
There will be less spillage and mess if upside down.

Place the hulls on saw horses, sand and get the inside of the hull smooth at the joint between the lower hull and the decking.
Clean with acetone.
Then cut out a 12" x 12" strip of fibreglass cloth for each side of each hull, lay the strip on a piece of plastic, wet it out, then pick up the whole mess and gently feed it through the porthole and place it 40% on the underside of the decking and 60% down the inner sidewall of each hull.
Once in place, roll to make sure there is a good bond, and that the polyester has spread smoothly.
Then lift the plastic away.
Others will roll the cloth directly on, but that can be messy.

Now you need to reinforce both the left inside and right inside of each hull. So four strips in all.
You are trying to reinforce the sidewall, as the wings exert a downward force on the hulls. This patch will help support the loading.

For the rear cross bar, the only way to do that patch is to cut and install a 4" porthole, which can be tricky. Do a search on the Forum for this.

Enjoy you H18, I miss mine.

_________________
2015 H16, with spin,
SOLD 1989 Hobie SX18 Sail # 1947 "In Theory..."
'Only two things are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity. But I'm not sure about the former.'

Here’s a link to the write up I did several years ago. Looks like the photos are still showing. I used carbon and epoxy.

It’s easiest if you take the boat apart to do this. Also, if you remove the access port ring, it will give you a little more room to work with and no risk of getting epoxy on the access port threads.

https://www.hobie.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=49780&hilit=Redline+reinforcement&start=0

I think you would probably be ok sailing in light winds/mild conditions without doing the reinforcement. Just keep an eye on the hulls.

sm