The comment I just made under "Technical" about farmers led me to this question. I'm not talking about the hacks most of us have to pull at one time or another just to get through; here's the kind of thing I'm after:
We go down to Flathead Lake in MT fairly regularly (though not last summer or this one - yet - thanks to the border closure). A handful of years back I had the TF down there and met a somewhat-local chap with a Stilleto 27. That was interesting, as I'd never seen one. Very nice guy, and we struck up a bit of a friendship. Ran into him there again a few years later, and just as we were leaving at the end of our trip a pal of his showed up towing a couple of cats (a Prindle 16 and a Sea Spray 15, each on its own trailer) behind a rustbucket old van. My friend described him as some kind of mountain man, living in a trailer with no power (which ain't no shame on its own, but...) To begin with, the towing was unsettling, as each trailer was just being towed by a regular ball (up here, that's totally illegal - you can tandem two trailers, but the first has to be connected to the towing vehicle via a fifth-wheel, and there's a total length limit that he was certainly exceeding). But, you know, "Montana". At first I was a little dismayed that were leaving when he was just showing up, but the closer I looked the more thankful I became.
Just about every place where rusty hardware-store hardware (rather than marine-grade) could be used on the Prindle, it was, and I had to avert my eyes for fear of damaging my soul. But the Sea Spray... For those not familiar, they're held together with a lot of extra tubing - the normal crosstubes, in addition to bolting into big humps on the hulls, are connected together by a third tube running aft of the mast, and from which the tramp hangs, so you have to clamber over it when you tack (and there's no room to spare between it and the boom). But there's also a tube connecting the bows together, which was missing on this boat. In its place was a length of complex extrusion, obviously scrap from a two-or-three-pane window frame, each end of which had a storm of sharp edges and corners that I was certain would make me bleed just by looking at them. And when he raised the main, there was enough space beneath the boom to march the Red Army through. Too tall a mast? Too short a main? Both? I dunno... I was just happy to be seeing it in my rear-view mirror.
Edited by jonathan162 on Jul 14, 2021 - 02:25 PM.
I'll bite
In my early days of sailing cats I bought a $75 AMF Trac 14. It was missing a mainsheet so I doubled up the cheap metal blocks from Lowes and bought 100ft of poly strand core. Made for a heavy mainsheet but got me on the water. I also used coated cable and cable clamps to make my first trapeze setup on that boat. My tiller extension was 3/4" PVC pipe. It feels sketchy now, but not window frame extrusion sketchy.
Rob
"If at first you do not suceed, well, so much for sky diving"
PVC tiller, huh? I just got back from Lake Newell (Brooks), where there's an H18 that appears to be reasonably well kept - it has a new Slo tramp and a few other arcane little improvements like a Trentec Supergoose, but they obviously don't use the trapeze.
Which is why their tiller extension is... wait for it... cut from a hockey stick. How Canadian...
My first boat, a N5.0 project:
- cracked paint on the hulls
- very ugly trampoline repair
- tiller extension made of two ski poles (pretty cool actually)
- home made mast with a more square shaped extrusion and home made base and head parts. (Non captive base)
- Diamond wire adjudters with a hook on each side and the wires fixed with a bolted presses rather than nicopress (same with some of the standing rigging wires)
- mast float made of a bouncing ball (bouncing around all the time)
- very old mainsail, the classic red-orange-yellow but with a big rust stain and full of dacron adhesive patches.
Great learning experience. I sailed it many years, until i dismasted and lost confidence on its integrity (not just me but also my crew)
Edited by Andinista on Jul 17, 2021 - 11:13 AM.
These turnbuckles were on the shrouds of the H16 parts boat we just bought.
Wow - shrouds? Do you have a means there of doing a tensile strength test? I'd love to know how little force it takes to unroll those eyes.
very old mainsail, the classic red-orange-yellow
I’m taking that slag personally! I’ve done 23mph with that sail.
https://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures?g2_itemId=135186&g2_imageViewsIndex=1&g2_GALLERYSID=dac32268e03993ac856b7d7341d4891d
The sketchiest cat I ever sailed was in Cambodia. Cost was $10. Had yellow poly for sheets, wire holding critical parts, a tramp made of scrap parts.
https://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures?g2_itemId=112905&g2_imageViewsIndex=1
E C Hilliard
Nacra 5.7
Bombardier Invitation
very old mainsail, the classic red-orange-yellow
I’m taking that slag personally! I’ve done 23mph with that sail.
https://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures?g2_itemId=135186&g2_imageViewsIndex=1&g2_GALLERYSID=dac32268e03993ac856b7d7341d4891d
I never said i didn’t like it 🙂
jonathan162 wrote: Wow - shrouds? Do you have a means there of doing a tensile strength test? I'd love to know how little force it takes to unroll those eyes.
According to the datasheet, 45 lbs working load. I'm not sure if the eye would unroll before the aluminum threads failed.
https://www.menards.com/main/tools-hardware/household-hardware/utility-hardware/turnbuckles/national-hardware-reg-zinc-eye-and-eye-turnbuckle/n221-721/p-1444448904196-c-9710.htm?tid=8883941197275834294&ipos=3