Good answer Bill. This is, I'm sure what happend to the
prior owner of my recently acquired Hobie 17.

He also could not right it by himself--at 150 pounds he
claimed he was not big enough. And he had difficulty launching
the boat by himself.

wrote

Peter,
Take it from a H17 owner - these are a pain to tack w/o a jib. A
couple of the people got it basically right. The key is to ease the
main as you come head to wind. The windage is high on these boats and
the mass of the craft is low so it slows down real fast when pointing
into the wind. Also the center of effort is well aft so the boat will
'weather vane' dead into the wind if you don't ease the main.

My technique was to:

1: keep the mail close hauled as you head up into the wind
2: release the main as you come through the wind. I like to 'help' the
main ease out as the boat rounds over to the new tack but don't
backwind the sail
3: fall off to a close reach
4: gradually sheet in the main. The boat will point up as you do this
(no matter what you do with the rudders) - the sail has more influence
on headding as these low boat speeds
5: as boat speed increases the rudders will bite again and if you
played it right you will now be on your desired close hauled course.

Just remember that in an H17 w/o a jib that at low boat speeds that the
main will be the more importand 'rudder'