There was no way I was going to face the strong summer winds here in Perth, Western Australia without hiking straps.

Any of these non ballasted daysailers really require you to use/move passengers and crew as the ballast to provide the righting moment. Practically that means constantly moving your arse to balance your boat. Of course not over powering your boat in the first place is the best starting point. Having a jib furler as standard equipment on the H146/H15s was one of the design factors that drew me to buying my H15 as that easily allows you to adjust power if conditions change. If the winds were blowing so hard that Id had to throw in a reef or two also, Id reconsider going out.

Re my hiking strap solution, the main challenge is to find anchor points fore and aft to attach them to. Up front I am using the mast step but for H146/H15 owners it is aft that presents the design challenge.

The H170/H18 with its open transom offers access to the rudder support for rear anchor points but the H146/H15 only presents you with a hollow dam like transom and minimal access to the inside of the hull. I saw the main design challenge as being able to spread the load of the weight of 2-3 adults over as wide an area as possible.

Removing the rear inspection hatch allowed me to fit one arm into the boat and touch the transom walls. See Photo 1 for what it looked like in there when I started. What you are seeing is the underside of the cockpit drain and the forward wall of the transom. By using a webcam I was able to see what I was doing when working in there (got that idea after my knee op).

I constructed my aft anchor points from strap aluminium and a solid tube of teflon plastic cut into thick disks (see photo 2). The bolt that goes through the anchor, teflon disk, transom fibreglass wall, ali straps, etc never actually touches the fibreglass of the transom wall. The bolt is surrounded by a thick, long nylon spacer as it passes through the transom wall. This spacer is rebated into the white teflon disks to keep it in place always (see 3rd photo).

The 4th photo shows the anchor unit bedded in Sikaflex against the inner transom wall and the 5th pic is the view facing the stern from inside the cockpit. The aluminium things are mountain climbing thingos.

Also for straps I used Zhik Hiking straps made for NS 14s which are about 6 feet long (6th photo). These straps have a special underside material that really grip sailing shoes and boots.

For the anchor points at the mast step I placed a 1/4 inch SS threaded rod through existing holes that were in the mast step. I used some more mountain climbing hardware at the ends of the rod and held the rod in place with spring loaded washers and nuts.

By using spectra line at the transom end to connect the hardware and strap I can tension the hiking straps enough to have them stand proud of the deck which makes it easy to slip you toes under the straps quickly.