great little boat
Looks great. What's the hull number? I have v-21 hull # 2347 (74), and am near the end of the restoration process. The mast seems like your biggest immediate concern. I definitely would not start out by looking to replace it. You aren't rigging the boat to be raced, right? Unless you're planning to race it, pull the dent out. You would be amazed how much compression that mast can tolerate, even with the dent.Can't help with the rudder. The rudder of my boat was made out of a 1.5 inch mahogony plank, cut so the bottom half could kick up if it hit something (or when launching the boat in shallow water), and the two halves held together with aluminum plates. Functional, but ugly. The leading and trailing edges were radiused, but no effort was made to give it an airfoil shape. Some early Ventures came with fiberglass rudders, but I heard the failure rate was high and they went to the wood."Masthead" has a good selection of used sails, but they know how to charge for them, too. Your best bet would be a local yacht club that sails one-design boats. maybe a Thistle would be about the right size. Racing sailors always have old sails around that are fine for cruising and you can probably pick up a main and jib for under $200.You need to do the measuring before you look for sails. Like the other Ventures, V-17s came with either a masthead or a fractional rig, and either with spreaders or without. You'll need to have the 'luff lengths' on hand, (the hoist distance) and the 'LP', which tells you how far the foot of the jib will extend beyond the mast.LP is the length of an imaginary line drawn perpendicular to the headstay and passing through the jib sheet attachment point.Thus, a boat like the V-17 might have a 'J' of 5 feet (distance from the front of the mast to the headstay attachment point), and an 'LP' of 7.5 feet. This would be called a 150% genoa, and is about as big as you'd ever want. When does a jib become a genoa? When the LP reaches 100%.Another thing Macgregor liked to do was cut corners on the keels. They knew the owners probably wouldn't try to go upwind much, ao they did a sloppy job casting and finishing the keels. I took mine completely out of the boat. It was so rusted, I had to lift the boat in a sling to get it to come out. The keel alone was a two month project. Ah, but now, I've got a beautiful foil shape. If you take this project on, don't scrimp. Chip and scrape as much of the crud off as you can, then take the whole mess to a body shop and have them sandblast it. Important: use epoxy, not polyester resin, (polyester isn't waterproof), and get the first coat on within one hour after the body shop finishes blasting. Oxidation of bright metal starts the second it's exposed to air.Good luck with your project. Have fun.