just curious,,,reading through Mike and sings fabulous adventure in Santa Cruz island (am I jealous? yes very) and the misc. damange to one of the boats got me to thinking about breaking hip braces,,ie. what's a reasonable method of attachment and construction. Necky boat had these huge swaths of unidirectional glass for the hip bracing,,other boats have suspended attachments for back bands with the bracing a function of minicell,,etc. For folks that have been in coastal conditions with your strip and s&g boats what have you found has been sufficient /insufficient? I know it's risky to draw generalities from a few specifics but what the heck. The consumer product safety council isn't dropping these things from buildings or sending them into surf with funny dummies so it's us dummies with the data.