No offence to my new water-ballast friends here, but I'll fess up that it happened to me... I'm new to sailing. Just bought my 95H23.5 a year ago. It sure seemed to heel a lot that first season. This year when I launched the boat I remembered a phrase in the manual (which I didn't get until after last seaon was over) about letting the ballast tank fill "until air stops coming out the hole". I placed the corner of a sheet of toilet paper over the hole after I thought it was full. IE, after about the amount of time it seemed to take to fill last year, as best I could remember. Well, the sheet of toilet paper didn't lie flat for many minutes! Last fall when I pulled the boat from the lake I remember being surprised at how fast the ballast tank emptied on the ramp. I had to ask my helper if he actually saw water pouring out, which he did, but it didn't take very long to empty. I didn't think much of it at the time. The bottom line is that now I'm pretty sure I sailed all last season with the ballast tank not completely full! Maybe I'm the only one here to make this mistake, but if you are at all doubtful or interested take a sheet of tisue, open up the vent and place the corner over the hole, then open the ballast value and see what happens. Besides having a full tank this year, since last year I've started to use normal mainsail depowering techniques such as hardening the outhaul and boom vang, and, oh yes, remembering to slacken the topping lift :-. Over the winter I was convinced that I need a second reef in the main, and a traveller. Now I'm not so sure. I actually took the main to a sailloft over the winter to get a second reef added, but as somebody else just wrote today, he too refused since the existing reef is already very deep. Besides, yada-yada, if the wind is that strong you shouldn't be out there anyway, etc. On the one hand I tend to disagree and say why not have another reef; better than not sailing at all, and it seems like a safety feature as well. On the other hand, when the wind is that strong it's hard to keep my hat and sunglasses on my head and I think now that it isn't really that enjoyable when the sind is that strong anyway. My lake is small and I'm never more than maybe 3 miles from the marina and half a mile from some shore. I still think a traveller would be nice though.