Sounds like you might have a compression post problem- look for dry rot. Do you mean twin jibs for self steering dead downwind? You can rig them by putting a longer pin in the masthead so that the eyes for the headstays go on the OUTSIDE of the masthead, then work out a way to do the same thing on the bottom. You'd need to rig up some spacers to keep things from chaffing. This will separate them by about an inch, which will make hoisting and lowering them much easier; the hanks won't hang up on each other. You might want to read Mike Mann's book about sailing a 15 to HI; he spent a lot of time under twins. He wisely had reefing on the jibs, reefed them most of the time, and mentioned that they would have been better a little smaller.. You don't need much sail area when going downwind unless you’re in a race, then obviously a spinnaker is the ticket. Two intermediate jibs might be about right, or a working jib and an intermediate might work fine together. Good luck. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Barnett via montgomery_boats Sent: Friday, March 23, 2018 11:17 AM To: montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com Subject: M_Boats: New M-17 owner My fiance and I recently acquired a 1976 M-17 - she's rough, and her sails are old (jibs are the original Reggie Armstrongs, the main is a non M-17 mutt that happens to fit), but she came to us, on a trailer, for a 3 figure price, so we'd have been nuts to say no! I'm pretty sure I'm going to order a double reef main from Precision, though I haven't decided yet on white vs colored sailcloth. We'll be doing quite a bit of cosmetic work on her to bring her up to a reasonable look for a lady of her age, but she seems solid, except for a glaring crack in the deck from the mast step to the forward hatch. It was a mystery to me until I realized the previous owner had either raised or lowered the mast with the stays at full tension. The bottom aft end of the mast isn't radiused (yet), so instead of simply pivoting aft, it jacked up about 1.5" and put enough pressure on the deck to flex and crack it. I'll be checking the compression post for damage when I take the mast step off to repair the deck. The M-17 was the first keelboat I ever sailed on, way back when on Lake Waconia, MN, and she always impressed me, though I've been as much a multihull sailor as a keelboater. I'm looking forward to going places with our little waterborne craft, now named Destiny (no trace of a previous name on her), and I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions as time goes on. Actually, I'll start now - has anyone used a double headstay for wing on wing jibs, and if so, how did you set it up? Mike Barnetthttp://claritysailingadventures@wordpress.com