Peter Chase!: great to have one of the original Dirigo designer-builders now on the thread. I know that every designer thinks the world of his boat, but my Dirigo 17 was greatly improved by the addition of, first, the stern skeg and later the bow skeg, as otherwise the boat was utterly rudder-dependent. I paddled the boat often enough on open water under severe conditions over the 24 years I owned it to become intimately familiar with its handling peculiarities. The Dirigo 17 was (and still is) a beautiful and solidly-built boat, and I dearly loved mine more and more with every improvement and modification I made to it, but a perfect boat it surely wasn't. If it's any solace to the original designer-builders, I've gone through a similar process of improvement and modification to my current Epic 16X, so maybe it's just me.