catalac

[Talbot]

Originally Posted by Little Otter

If it made it over here why don't you sail it back yourself, if i get my boat out of country thats what i'm going to do.

I have just sold my own 9m Catalac after 20+years of ownership. I was very happy that it was capable of transatlantic. My future plans require a vessel with more capability.

My reference to purchase was that with a little bit of work, it can easily be worth a lot more money. I sold mine for approx $50,000

As for sailing the vessel to UK I dont have the time to do that at present, and I certainly would not have the time to do the preparations for the trip in FL beforehand.

[jhb0510]

Hi Guys
I am thinking about buying a 9m Catalac, hence me finding this thread.

I had seen the PBO article, which had convinced me about the boat. It talks about sailing at 45 degrees and not really experiencing problems until 30 degrees. I thought that was quite good, but you are talking about them not being good to windward!

Can you enlighten me?

Thanks

[Talbot]

Hi JHB and welcome to this forum.

I can speak with some authority about this subject because the article was about me and my Catalac Hi Jude. I owned this vessel for 21 years.

Catalacs are a very old hull design with a very short waterline for their length. They hate a short steep sea, and can come to a total stop in the chop in the solent.

In a longer sea or if being driven hard enough to go through the chop, then they can do very well.

They are very sensitive to excess weight, and to correct setting up of the standing rigging.

They need clean faired hull. I had spent some time on working on the underwater shape. I had changed the shape of the genoa and where it was sheeted. I had an outboard which i could raise out of the water to reduce drag. This was a diesel with an ultra long leg and hydraulic lift.

In the right circumstances they could achieve some amazing speeds for their waterline lengths, but are very short on sail area for light winds. I never considered a reef until at least 23 kts wind over the deck. On one occasion while single handing up the solent I had not reefed and 33 kts over the deck from 45 degrees on the bow and was doing 10+ kts.

Running before the wind I have frequently had significantly more than 10 kts.
My last trip cherbourg to Portsmouth I covered over 72 nmiles in less than 10 hours.

However, most catalacs are overloaded with their rigging badly set up, thus they do not try to sail very far to windward. To be fair, if the wind and tide were against me in the solent, I motored as well.

However, they are a lot of boat for the money, especially the 9m. Very good for the family, not so good for an enthusiastic sailor, cause if you are sailing with the whole family, it is very easy to overload. Please ask any points of detail, and I will try to answer.

[jhb0510]

Hi Talbot

I was rather hoping you would reply!

Could I start by asking you what you mean by " I had spent some time on working on the underwater shape"

Thanks

James

[Talbot]

I cleaned the hull back to clear gel coat

I re-faired one or two poor scrape fillings.

I filled the cutout for the P bracket (just forward of the skegs)

I filled the gap between the back of the skeg and the front of the rudder.

I covered the whole underwater with VC Tar, which after several coats (6 or 7 cant remember now) had annealed into itself and made a beautifully clean underwater profile, and then added the anti-foul.

Most antifoul is good initially. But I was very unhappy with micron. because I was not using the boat as often as I wanted, but she was in a tide flow, the micron coat disolved with craters. I discovered that these were really detrimental to smooth flow, and changed to TeaMac antifoul. This was not only better, but significantly cheaper.


Hope that helps

[Talbot]

During my time with my Catalac, I did the following

Fitted heating (4kw eberspacher)

Fitted a shower

Fitted behind mast reefing

Fitted new instruments

Fitted new fuel tank

fitted a new engine - 27 hp diesel outboard

fitted dinghy davits and a large solar panel

changed the genoa sheeting arrangements and winches

replaced the headlining

fitted an anchor winch

fitted a bow thruster

fitted new cooker and water heater plus replaced all the gas piping.

So I am happy to pass on information on this.

[ssullivan]

Interesting thread...

Some differences between the 9M and 10M are:

*Shower is standard, but I don't use it due to mold concerns.
*No P-bracket (nothing forward of skegs aside from saildrives)
*No gap between back of skeg and forward of rudder. Back of skeg is a semi-circle and the rudder's forward edge is a mating semi-circle. One fits inside the other.

[Talbot]

9m was built before saildrives came out. The original engine was a petrol dolphin, as it was the only one short enough to fit in the space. This engine had to be stopped, then the electrics were switched and the engine then re-started in reverse. It was also not a very reliable system, so berthing must have been exciting. The arrival of the Yanmah 1GM replaced the old dolphin, although there were a few made with a renault engine.

The 9m was also made as standard with a lifting rudder (steel blade) and no skeg, because a lot were moored near the base of Tom Lacks operations in Mudeford. This area dried out, and the lifting blade stopped any possibility of the rudder being damaged as the boat dried out. The skeg was attached later and the rudder converted to a solid piece. A lot of these were not located very exactly, for example one of mine had a gap of over 0.7" between skeg and rudder, whereas the other was a nice tight fit. IIRC the 10m was made with a skeg as a part of the mold.

[Tropic Cat]

Originally Posted by Talbot

During my time with my Catalac, I did the following
.......changed the genoa sheeting arrangements and winches........

I'd love to hear more about your modified sheeting project. My working jib sheets to cabin top mounted tracks and seems to be a pretty well thought out arrangement. However, I no longer use the 155 genoa because of it's poor windward performance and the awkward sheeting arrangement.

Is this the modification you're speaking of?

[Talbot]

Originally Posted by rickm505

I'd love to hear more about your modified sheeting project.

Rick,
Correct. The normal sheeting position for the catalac 8 and 9m Genoa is via a single block on the aft quarter of each hull. The sheets go through this from the clew and then under the guardrail around the cockpit (slightly different on the 8), across the cockpit and up to the winch. This means that it is impossible to get a narrow sheeting angle and exploit the slot. Furthermore, when tacking, both sides of the cockpit are unsafe for small children due to the sheets position, until such time as a tack is completed and the passengers can come back out to play.

I was not impressed by this. My family were even less impressed!

For the working jib, there is a short track for a genoa car just aft of the shrouds and about 1m long, directly forward of the winch and about 1.5m in front of it It is also inside the handrail on the coach roof. I really wanted to extend this for the genoa, but it meant that I would have had to significantly reduce the size of the genoa.

I decided that the track had to be outside of the hand rail and I installed one approx 1.75m long from the very end of the coachroof, where it meets the cockpit. This was a reasonable compromise of slot size versus genoa size. However it created a further proble. The genoa car was never designed to be a turning block would never have been strong enough to take the loadtransferring the angle through over 90 degrees. Thus I created a piece of very strong stainless, bent shaped and supported to install turning block. the plate fitted over the bulkhead through a 90 degree angle so that I could bolt it through the plywood reinforced bulkhead. The angle on it was designed to take the sheet from the genoa block and provide the correct angle to a pair of self tailing 30 winches that I had purchased from ebay. Thus the strain from the sail was primarily placed through the turning block and also on the winch
This picture gives some idea - not very good, but I dont have many pictures with me, and am not sure that I have anything better anyway!!!


You can just see the turning block aft of the GRP moulding around the end of the handrail, plus the genoa car.

As you might imagine, this made an enormous difference to the comfort inside the cockpit when tacking. However the shape of the genoa was now totally wrong for this sheeting arrangement, the clew had to be a lot lower, but also closer to the tack, thus when reefing, you had to move the genoa car.

I made one major mistake when fitting this system, I thought I had calculated the loads, but had forgotten to double them, Whilst energetically tacking in a round the island race, my son applied so much strain that the turning blocks started to distort. Needless to say we had a tad too much sail up at the time!!!! I changed these turning blocks for the largest aluminium framed Barton turning block which was rated at twice the older (distorted) one. Never had another problem.

A couple of additional comments. When I designed the platforms for the turning blocks, I added an extra lip forward and below the block, that I could use to secure the aft end of a jackstay from there forward and secured at the deck fitting of the baby stay.

The winches from ebay were by ARCO USA - a company that had gone out of business. However, they were in pristine condition and less than 50% of lewmars. Bargain thought I.

I installed them, and set off thinking at last SWMBO would be able to winch in the genoa sometimes (wrong), however as soon as I got some strain on one it started to clatter and the ratchet would not hold. I thought bother (or something similar). I then discovered that the other did exactly the same - This was easter and I had visions of disaster plus recriminations from buying something that was expensive and didnt work!
Google to the rescue.
I eventually found a company by the same name in Australia. So I phoned them up on Easter weekend - not really expecting to be able to get help but determined to be seen to be doing something (anybodyelse been there!!!) I was surprised to find somebody at home. I was even more surprised when they told me that although they did not use that particular version of this winch, they did have some data. two hours later, my email pinged and a pdf of the winch exploded diagram, plus a recomendation to invert one of the gears arrived. Well done ARCO.
I immediately departed for the boat, and inverted the gear as instructed, and all was right with the world.

[jhb0510]

Hi

Thanks for all the information.

What size solar panel did you have and did it keep up with what you needed. What did the deisil out board charge at? What was your battery capacity?

It sounds like we have very similar needs to you when you got your boat. We have 3 kids 4, 6, 8 and a Dog. Although the 8m Telstar we have at the moment can sleep us all, as soon as it starts raining, which it does occasionly in sunny Cornwall it gets a bit tight!

Thanks for the info.

James

[Talbot]

Solar panel was too big for how I was using the boat - 180w but was sized for perceived future need at the time I purchased. It had no problem keeping up at all.

Diesel outboard was max 10 amps, but would do that from quite low revs.

I ended up with about 300 amp/hrs for domestic, and 100 amp/hr (400 cca) engine start linked to 400CCA bow thruster battery.

I had a significant battery useage from laptop, eberspacher and bow thruster, but had replaced all my lights with flourescent tubes or halogen. Doing the same today, there would be more LEDs

[Talbot]

Originally Posted by ssullivan

I have yet to find anything of major concern wrong with the Catalac 10M after 2000 miles on her. I'm working it though.

Sean
My son is looking at a 10m at the moment. I am very familiar with the 9m, but would appreciate any comments on the 10m that I should be looking at.

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by Talbot

Sean
My son is looking at a 10m at the moment. I am very familiar with the 9m, but would appreciate any comments on the 10m that I should be looking at.

Here is what I know to look for:

Look at the chainplates - Rick M had mentioned they aren't always done correctly, having balsa between the exterior mounts and the interior plates. Mine either were done correctly, or were re-done. Possible location for leaks.

Of course, pay special attention to those saildrives. Look for electrolysis, water in the saildrive gear oil, etc...

The water and diesel tanks are steel, so there might be corrosion issues after 20 years. I have some corrosion on my tanks, but none have leaked - yet. I imagine they will eventually have to be replaced.

Jeez... I wish I had a nice punch list for you, but I don't.

There wasn't really anything wrong with my boat other than what previous owners did to it. I corrected the problems for about $200 + haul out charge. They hooked up electrical systems incorrectly causing the electrolysis problem I had and installed prop cages to slow the boat down.

I went through the boat with a fine tooth comb and tore into everything before I even put an offer down. I (and the surveyor) literally found nothing done incorrectly at the time of manufacture. Only the owner mistakes.

The surveyor took me aside and said, "You know you a buying a boat with a pedigree, right? Same as Hinckley or any other, right?"

This is one of the reasons I bought the boat. The quality of construction is as good as if I had built the boat myself. They seemed to have cared deeply for their work and the details. I have yet to find any errors of deficiency in construction.

If you have some specifics, I'd be happy to answer them. In general, there isn't much to watch out for, as far as I've seen with mine. The build quality is just outstanding.


But... when he gets into the specifics of the boat, I'd be happy to help on any details. I just don't have a list of general failure points because I haven't seen any.

[Talbot]

Thanks, I had already picked up that the saildrive diaphrams were overdue for replacement.

None of the other Catalacs have a foam or balsa sandwich construction They are solid lay-up. Is the 10m a sandwich?

The boat he is looking at has 2 x 30hp 3HM35 Yanmars with 2 bladed folding props, and are quoting max speed 9 kts - which seems a tad fast!
Everything else seems fairly reasonable, so he may have a go at it.