I was never able to get my FX tramp satisfactorily tight enough just doing it by hand. Newer tramps have a couple of spots on the sides that tie to the hull I think also. Some mechanical advantage for the sides, and I used a prybar to go through the lacing in the back one by one, and I'm pretty happy with it now. Dyneema/spectra is also the only way to go. I did start with the sides first though, doesn't sound that way with the previous post.
Another thing I did recently was replace the carpet pads for the daggerboards. Instead of epoxy-ing new carpet in, I went to the hardware store and bought about three feet of velcro with pressure sensitive adhesive, (PSA), already on it, just peel-N'- stick. I used just the soft half of the velcro. I cut the 2" wide strips in half, and cut them to length. I used two shorter pieces front and back just taking it to the point where the trunk gets narrow, then longer pieces down the sides. I did this on the top and the bottom of the well and the boards go up and down very smoothly. I think I'm going to use a router and cut down the center of the board so I can put pull up lines on the boards now. I'm very happy with this setup. I'm not real confident in the longetivity of the velcro, but it was cheap and it took me all of twenty minutes to replace it in the first place. The nice thing is that the boards can't hardly touch the front/back edge of the trunk any longer.
I also took some Hydro turf and ran a strip down the edge of the deck, near the rear beam. It was a left over pieces from doing a H14 a few years ago. My tiller extension was starting to wear through the texture on the deck. I recently was told by a coach to keep the tiller pinned to the deck, so that's what I've been doing. The tiller seems to have less wobble to it when you have to let go when hoisting/dousing as well. I think this winter I'm going to peel that off, and cover the whole deck between the beams in the stuff, looks good on the Wild Cat, and it’s pretty comfy to sit on. On the Hydroturf website they've got some pretty killer deals on stuff that was made too thin, or wrong color, etc. The size for surfboards would about right I think. Also available with PSA, so you don’t have to deal with contact adhesive.
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