Dean Catamarans and Peter Dean

[vadrouille]

Hi all

I have had some major structural issues with a 1999 Dean 380 catamaran and i am trying to get hold of Peter Dean for some answers.

To my knowledge there is only 3 dean 380s built so i think Mr Dean himself may be the only person who can help with my questions.

Im not angry with Peter in any way, i believe some of the issues are to do with previous owners, however i have some pressing questions regarding the keels which Peter will be able to answer.

I have tried emailing him and facebook but no joy, if anybody has a personal email for him or could pass this link on to him i would appreciate it.

The boat is now fixed but my mind is still curious and would like some answers!

Cheers

Tel

[GordMay]

Dean Catamarans
Phone +27 21 577 2221/2
Fax +27 21 577 2223
Web: Dean Catamarans

[vadrouille]

Cheers for those, unfortunately the website and numbers are no longer. Dean cats went bust a couple of years back and the website has been in-active for some time.

Seems to be Peter Dean has vanished!

[FSMike]

You might try the folks on multihulls4us. One of them may have current contact info.

[vadrouille]

No joy so a friendly bump

[teneicm]

Did you get my PM some time back?

[barnakiel]

Try contacting Tamas, here:

Home - Xta-Sea.com

Ask if he might help you get to Peter Dean.

b.

[Nick & LA]

His email is powercat@deancatamarans.com.

[Nick & LA]

You can also try to connect with him on Linked In

[vadrouille]

Hi Teneicm, yes i reserved your pm, sorry for not getting back! The pms and emails i have been getting all head towards the powercat addy. I have sent an email, not a nasty one, just one with questions. But as of yet no response :-(

[vadrouille]

knows him they can pass on this thread as i would expect a reply from him.

I have posted these pictures now so everybody can understand why i want to speak with him.

I have hundreds of pictures showing voids all over the boat, but i have shown the worst in the hope that this may draw some attention. As you can see, the worst void is actually on the back of the port keel and it ended up being a 1 inch diameter hole. The fact with the voids is there is no hiding it, its simply poor lay up, the amount of dry glass matt i came over was actually surprising! But however bad it looks, it was repairable, and i have repaired it.

Now, believe it or not, the voids are not the issue!!!! I wish to know more about my keels.

To try and keep the story short, i had the boat surveyed and knew about most of the voids. But the interesting thing was the port keel, it was bowed. I have since put 5 square meters off cloth and epoxy on, as well as epoxy filler to take the bow out. I still have not completely got rid of it but its loads better than what it was.

As you can see from one of the pics, the keels look like they have an add on at the bottom, this add on actually covers all leading edges on the keel (back, bottom, front) which vastly increases surface area of the keel.

Now i have had so many theories to why this has happened. Grounding? Drug smuggling (the water tanks are glassed into the keels but there is space below each tank to do such a thing!)? Experimentation? Who knows.

Both keels are identical with this strange add on. I have not dismissed grounding, but in all fairness if that was the case, i would expect lots more damage than just both the keels bottoms coming off. There is no evidence that the hull has been damaged from the outside or inside. Not even any sign of damage where the keel is moulded to the hull.

Experimentation sounds good to me, or poor performance, only 3 were built (as far as i can tell) so its hard to compare to others!

Anyway, this is by no means a dig at Peter Dean, this is just a plea for some answers to a few questions i have.

I bought this Dean 380 as its huge inside, it weighs 9 tons and is a big old lady. I will be setting off around the world with my family in the next few years and i bought the boat for that very reason.

Peter, if your reading this, please get in touch!

[vadrouille]

Having to upload pictures 1 by 1 for some reason!

[vadrouille]

This is the void that went straight through the boat. You can also see what looks like to be layers of gelcoat in-between the layup of the boat!

[vadrouille]

This pic shows a "void within a void" and the hole that we had to create to get rid of the entire void.

[vadrouille]

And finally, lots of dry glass matt that we took from the void.

On the bright side, after 4 weeks labour intensive work (only 2 of us doing it) she got stripped, filled, faired and smoothed. Then 4 coats of epoxy paint as anti osmosis as well as 4 coats of epoxy copper.