Concerning US2987, Skip Crowell and I were the first people to put her in the water, back in 1969 at Lake Lemon. I snapped the tiller off within ten minutes of launch trying to avoid a windward capsize. The boat was so fast, compared to anything else on the lake, that we quickly ran out of lake and did our first tack with Skip dragging in the water as we pivoted around his body. The tiller was repaired in the Physics Department student machine shop by 5 a.m. the next morning.
In Lake Lemon racing, with Thistles, Y-Flyers, and Flying Dutchmans. the 5-0-5 (almost) always finished first, crossing the line before the next boat even rounded the previous mark. (The only lake race we lost occurred when I took my brother out as crew (he had never sailed before, big mistake), and in the confusion we sail most of the last upwind leg with the centerboard up. No other races were even close.
A few weeks after the initial launch, the boat was entered in the Midwest championships in Milwaukee, by Max Baumer, Walt Powers, and myself. We rotated in pairs for the skipper/crew positions, and won the first race handily. That boat would point 5 degrees higher than any of the other boats. In the next two races the boat was dismasted twice in a blow, and the remaining races were called because of weather.
A few weeks after that, Max and I entered the US2987 in the 1969 North American Championships at Newport News, VA. We has practiced about 5 days a week in preparation and the boat weighed in at 2 lbs. above minimum, just about the weight of the new tiller housing we built in the shop. We were using a beautiful set of Banks sails, with a spinnaker that could be carried without collapse close hauled. This came in very handy in one of the championship races were we lead the pack to the finish line and a boat from Ohio tried to override us to windward (a downwind finish). We just luffed until their spinnaker was wrapped about their mast, then we sailed away to finish first. At the end of the series, US2987 was in overall 5th place, missing overall 3rd place by 30 seconds.
We always did well in the light airs, but we tended to capsize often in the heavy wind races. In one of the North American Championship races, we tried to fly the spinnaker from the trapeze, for the first time. We quickly dumped the boat, but still recovered to get a 19th in that race. We never did learn how to run a spinnaker from the trapeze on Lake Lemon; if the wind was strong enough, you ran out of lake before you could get the spinnaker up and down!
I may be biased, but I think that US2987 was probably one of the finest boats of her day, and I am very pleased that you are still sailing her.
Jim Willett