This is a common misunderstanding.
Maybe it is time that I forget about being impartial for a moment.
Robi, you do NOT have the AHPC stocks. You have the McKenzie stocks, which were supposed to be a carbon copy of the AHPC stocks but in reality are just a ....., Well you can guess what words are missing here.
I tested the McKenzie stocks myself on teh first Blade F16 to arrive on the European shores and I was seriously disappointed by them. I still have trouble accepting that McKenzie did such a poor job on the stocks and if it is up to me then no McKenzie stocks will ever come to Europe. I'm not kidding. The European buyers of the Blade are all going for a different supplier of stocks, including the guy who bought the first Blade.
I know Vectorworks Marine has sourced a new supplier for the stocks, but I have not seen the new stocks myselfs so I can't comment on them. I'm really hoping that this new supplier took a good hard look at the post 2003 AHPC stocks.
Wouter the AHPC rudder stock royally suck for our South FL environment.
I don't have that much issues with weeds and waterplants, so indeed I do not test the rudderstocks in this way much. However, the marstrom stocks are in basis not any different then the AHPC stocks, the same applies to a variaty of stocks except Hobie and Dotan stocks. If you have trouble clearing weeds of the AHPC stock (Not the McKenzie stock) then you have exactly the same trouble clearing it off the Marstrom (etc) stocks. So why pay 3 times the money for exactly the same thing ?
I hear some people are consider the old Nacra pull-down line system. Most diagrams/photo's of it that I've seen show a setup that has exactly the same issues whe clearing weed. For example : you need to go the leeward side of the boat to clear weeds of the leeward rudder. But in addition you have introduced new problems like rudder lock down creep, because the line is slipping through the cleat.
Too much sea grass, to many sand bars. If my rudder hit anything, I bent a stainless steal screw that was a huge pain in the but to replace.
I repeat again. you do not have a AHPC rudder stock, you have the McKenzie copy of an AHPC stock and that is a very very poor copy.
In addition, your amount of sandbars don't impress me much. I don't sail in any ocean either. I go out and come in through huge surfs, passing at least a tripled of sandbars. And I have encountered my share of ankerchains, bouy ankerlines by now. All the time the stocks worked exactly as planned and much better then any F18, Prindle or Hobie stocks I ever sailed with. I'm not kidding here. The best thing about the AHPC stocks is that you can actually unlock them before entering the surf and still sail full speed through the breakers with your rudders fully down. Only at the first sandbar the tips his the bottom and float up immediately. This means I have full control when going through the large breaking surf at high speed, something I did not have with other stock design as they would have been trailing behind the boat already. Also the force to release the rudder boards on the AHPC stocks (not Mckenzie stocks) is lower than on say the Hobie or nacra stocks. On the Hobie and Nacra stocks you could feel the tip of the rudderboards being dragged over the bottom for a while. With my AHPC stocks this doesn't happen.
I'm not kidding, these AHPC stocks are the best stocks I have used ever, with the Hobie tiger stocks coming in as close second.
I have ahpc rudder stocks and I am not happy with them.
You really do not AHPC stocks. Not many in USA have the post 2003 AHPC stocks actually. Most Taipan sailors have the pre-2003 Alu AHPC stocks and these are less optimal. The Blade sailors all have the McKenzie stocks which look alot like the AHPC stocks but fail on a couple of key design features. These make the McKenzie stocks a real pain in the neck (IMHO).
If you don't believe me then ask Tim Bohan, I showed him my stocks and how they work/kick-up when he was over here.
Wouter
