G-Cat Manual

I doubt you will be able to find a manual. I have owned a 5.7 for about seven years now. They are sturdy vessels and from what I have seen, one of the best built. If you need help with anything in particular... let me know. Since I have had mine the only thing I went to Hans for was a spare rudder... my original rudder delaminated.

Hans has announced that he is starting production again. If you got no answer from him... he might be out of the country on one of his fish farming operations.

I've called and e-mailed Hans several times and all he says is to go to his website but I can never find anything. Thank you for your help. I'll get back with you if I need any advise.

Where are you located? I am on the east side of tampa bay and usually use EG Simmons Park as home port.

To tell you the truth my husband is the one how sails here in New Mexico. He has some questions he would like to ask you. Would it be possible for you to give us your telephone number and he can call you. I quarantee that this is not a con. His name is John Beers. My name is Jane. Please let me know because I don't know the protocal.

Jane,

Use the private message system if you decide to exchange personal information like phone numbers. Google indexes this site relentlessly so anything posted here becomes public info right away.

Click on the little envelope icon in a members post to send a PM.

I have a 5.7M manual but not the 5.0M manual. I'm looking for the latter but would be happy to share the former. Hit me up with a PM if you're still looking.
-Dan

...and I just came across the 5.0M manual as well! Let me know!!

Dear phatmack, is this 5.0M manual something you could scan and upload onto this site to share? Thanks a million!

phatmack wrote: ...and I just came across the 5.0M manual as well! Let me know!!

I'd like to make these manuals available here if possible. Are they printed manuals or online? If you have printed manuals would you be willing to mail them to me? I could scan and process, then mail them back.

Sure!! I'm not sure how well they'll show up here but I'll drop the scanned images into this thread and you guys feel free to do with them what you please!!

Sorry for the low resolution. Hans emailed them to me directly and this is what I got. If they're completely unreadable to some of you (I can mostly make out everything) then I can try to embiggen and enhance them via photoshop but I'm not sure how much I'd get out of them. Thanks!!
-Dan

Direct Links:

nicely illustrated... i've seen some chineese nacra manuals that were real bad!

Hans has announced that he is starting production again. If you got no answer from him... he might be out of the country on one of his fish farming operations.

I sailed with Hans on sunday.
I regret to inform you G-cat is not back in production. Hans made an attempt at getting the old 5.0 back into production as an f16 but had poor results at the Global Challenge (very well may not have been the cat's fault, as the skipper had no practice on it, and it was extremely windy for solo racing at the event).

He IS doing a very small production run of the 5.7 hulls with modern materials... let him know if you want to spend for a new set of carbon hulls 🙂

He IS doing a very small production run of the 5.7 hulls with modern materials... let him know if you want to spend for a new set of carbon hulls 🙂

Funny! My father and I spoke with him several months back when we were trying to find a used G-Cat. He said he had one of his personal boats he would sell us and then backed out on it but said he'd build and sell us a new one if we wanted to go that route... I didn't know he was going to go with carbon but that explains the ~$15k price tag he threw out there when we asked about them!

Needless to say we jumped on a 1980 model out in Baltimore thanks to the fine folks at thebeachcats.com!

The "PLAN" was to win the global challenge (f16) and then go back into production.

currently he is trying to sell the power g-cat for around 300k 🙂

I am in need of some help. I live on a lake in TX. Thinking the storm we just had was going to go well south of us, I had my 82 G-Cat on the shore and it was flipped in the wind yesterday snapping my mast in two. The rest of the boat is in good shape with minor damage. Do you know where I can find a replacement mast? I bought with boat this summer for minimal dollars and have put a little money into it since then. This is my first boat and have been having the time of my life with my boys on it. I am utterly sick that this has happened as this was an extremely clean boat to this point.

Thank you!

sorry to hear about your mast. HOw high was the wind gust that flipped/broke it?

since these are out of production i see a few options:

repair: you may be able to "sleeve" it and save it - http://www.catsailor.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=218749#Post218749

keep an eye outall the local ads (craigslist, ebay, this site, catsailor.com, etc) for parts boats (and post "looking for mast)

you may have to modify a hobie mast or similar. (the old g-cats that were used as rentals had a slightly smaller mast - 26' i think) Be sure to hold on to your old mast for parts

edited by: andrewscott, Sep 08, 2010 - 10:38 AM

Masts masts masts... we found a guy willing to part out his GCat for me and ship it to us... including the mast. Which got smashed in transit. So now we have one that was snapped in half and modified (read, another section of mast was bolted on) and one that was crushed and "fixed" though it's still bent a little bit. Any luck getting yours fixed/replaced?

Did you find the manual? I'm looking for onme, too. Would appreciate any help.

JMBEERS57 wrote: I am looking for a manual for an early g-cat sailboat and parts list. I have tried Hans Geissler web site but I don't get anywhere with it can anyone help me. Thanks

I have a g-cat manual 5.0. I have the original brochure for it as well. I have all the original paper work that came with my 5.0. Damon admin, I can mail all my stuff to you to publish on here if you like?

scubayachts wrote: I have a g-cat manual 5.0. I have the original brochure for it as well. I have all the original paper work that came with my 5.0. Damon admin, I can mail all my stuff to you to publish on here if you like?

That would be great, I love to make this stuff available here, really helps the next new owner. I'll send you an email.

I am also in urgent need of a g-cat manual. The boat was sitting by the road with "free" lettering on the side with electrical tape. Thats why the boat is "Freebird". But most of the rigging is missing. I appreciate any help I can get-

Thanks

Gil Groendyke
gilgroendyke@gmail.com

+1 for getting the full manual up on the site!

@giljaneg: I posted some info previously that has illustrations of the rigging but no real specific details... hopefully the manual will help once it gets posted! I have a 5.0m sitting in my driveway so if there is anything specific that I can help out with in the mean time feel free to ask and I'll do my best to share what info I have!!

I haven't hear back from scuba about the manual, but while we are having this discussion a G-Cat 5.0 just got posted to the classifieds.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/classifieds/catamarans/p11397-g-cat-5-0-with-trailer.html

I've just received an absolute treasure trove of original G-Cat material from member scubayachts. It will take a while to scan it all but here is a preview.

It would be great if anyone else that has a stash of material on out-of-production boats could share it like this.

I appreciate any help I can get-

Gil, you should remove your email address. The net is full of spambots that look for just such postings, it can lead to a world of trouble. Use "contact the member" or PM to get hiold of people here.

I've scanned the original G-Cat "assembly manual" and created a downloadable 8 1/2 x 14 PDF. Since Hans created this before personal computers it appears to have been completely hand-drawn and then copied. I tried to clean it up as well as I could without losing the "character" of the original. In some cases the text was nearly unreadable so I replaced the text in Photoshop while trying to keep it looking natural.

Please download the file to test, I don't happen to have any legal size paper to test the printing, so if anyone can download and print it let me know if you find problems or if there are details that need to be enhanced.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures/?g2_itemId=80967

Please download the file to test, I don't happen to have any legal size paper to test the printing, so if anyone can download and print it let me know if you find problems or if there are details that need to be enhanced.
http://www.thebeachcats.c…ictures/?g2_itemId=80967

Looks great to me!! Thanks for getting that uploaded as a PDF.

Can't wait to see all of the rest of that documentation you have to scan!!

Edit: This doco is awesome btw... I finally know the proper way to rig the boom and mast for mast rotation! I had no idea what that horn was at the bottom of the mast! Thanks again for your efforts.
-Dan

Edited by phatmack on Jul 11, 2011 - 10:53 AM.

phatmack wrote:
Can't wait to see all of the rest of that documentation you have to scan!!

Coincidentally at about the same time I received all that physical material from scubayachts, another member almax00 uploaded 12 different G-Cat documents from 1983. Some are the same things I've received but others are unique, including a price list. The are all good quality PDF's.

http://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures/?g2_itemId=80976

phatmack wrote: I had no idea what that horn was at the bottom of the mast! Thanks again for your efforts.

I bet a lot of G-Cats have been sailed without the Teflon mast-chip which evidently is installed after the mast is raised but before the forestay is tensioned.

Looking carefully at the original assembly manual for a boat can be a big help even if you've been sailing it for years. I recently slowly re-read the Hobie 18 assembly manual and found something I'd been doing wrong for a LONG time. Sometimes methods change for the better, but it's always a good idea to try it the original way.