Hi,

I am Jon Redifer, I own a 1984 245, I believe that I have already sent you
the hull number.  I live in  Coatesville, PA., a relatively small town about
35 miles west of Philadelphia. I am a self employed carpenter, have done
that kind of work most of my adult life. The skills I have acquired doing
that obviously help a lot in the work that I have done on my boat. I keep my
boat at the mouth of the Chesapeake bay, where the Susquehanna river empties
into the bay. I sail, and race my boat in that area mostly. I race in a phrf
class, a handicapped class for those that aren't familiar with that. When I
first bought my boat it had been sitting in a boatyard, unused for about 4
yrs, with about 8 inches of water inside the boat. I have rebuilt a lot of
the inside, replaced a lot of rotten wood. I made a few changes from
original, but kept the layout similar to what it was. The interior is not
totally finished, but is functional and reasonably comfortable. I also have
rewired  the boat almost totally, and have replaced just about all of the
lines and hardware on the topside. I have a new main (purchased in 2001) and
a new 170 Genoa (2003). As with a lot of older sailboats, there are always a
few more projects I would like to tackle, so the boat is a work in progress,
but I have spent more time sailing, and less time working on it in the last
2 yrs. The boat seems well behaved, fairly solid and stable,  although it
does like to be reefed fairly soon as the winds come up, it heels pretty far
and develops a lot of weather helm if you don't start to reduce sail area by
about 12-15 knts of wind. The boat has a swing keel. When the keel is up,
she draws about 38 inches of water, that is a nice feature in this part of
the bay as that allows me to get into pretty shallow water when I want to
anchor and swim, or scrub the bottom of the boat. Would love to hear from
anyone else with a 245, there doesn't seem to be a lot of them out there.