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Apologies for the long post...I type very fast.....
Last year I'd posted on a thread that Alex started about his alternator puking and reported that my practically new alternator had also puked, the cause was that the nuts securing the positive post to the rectifier had loosened up inside the alternator (it's an AMPIT-100-ER from Compass Marine) and it started arcing. Since I was away from home on day 2 of a 17 day trip, I was able to clean it up and tighten the nuts down again and continued on my merry way. When I got home I removed the alternator and replaced the partially melted rectifier and nuts and it's been fine....for exactly one year.
This past weekend the exact same thing happened....the tach started dropping to zero.....then it would pop back up....over and over. I shut the engine down and started poking around and once again I found the positive post had loosened up inside the alternator and the arcing has fried the new rectifier.
I'm at a bit of a loss, the system is practically new, I'm using a Balmar 614 regulator with alternator temp sensor and all the wiring in the charging circuit is new and appropriately sized. I can't help but to wonder if there is some sort of heat issue going on with the alternator that is causing these nuts to back off and hence causing the arcing.
I don't want to give up on this alternator, Rod built it and I'm confident it is still good...once I put a new rectifier in it that is.....but I also don't want to replace rectifiers every year either.
Anyone come upon this type if issue before and if so, what was your cure????

Just weighing in with some pics that actually show why these stanchions leak. Whether from using them for leverage or perhaps getting caught on something and bent out (or in...), this can be the result and the cause of the leaking.
I was able to easily straighten all of them out and bedded them in butyl and we do not use them for leverage...ever.
Noah's photos look just like ones I took of the resulting water damage to the galley area and that's just to depressing to think about....

Noah....now that's a pretty slick idea. 

Understood Noah, if the pattern remains then yes, that's definitely a good option. But I do believe the pattern itself is made up of gelcoat so if it's worn thru to show the fiberglass underneath, then just paint or gelcoat will end up smooth in that particular area. I do have an area on the spray cover that is a good example of this wear I'm talking about, I'll get a shot of it and see if I can determine if there is any of the original non-skid texture left to it.
Stay tuned.

Noah, I've seen a C34 where they just painted a non-skid product over the existing non-skid, it honestly didn't look good (to me) and I just remember thinking how darn easy it was to sand the non-skid down flat to apply the new gelcoat. Honestly, sanding it down was the easy part!!!
Jim, I don't know about Dave's boat but on our C-34 the non-skid is worn completely thru in a few areas, it just looks like they sprayed the mold a bit thin in these areas. I've seen this on other boats including other C34's, C27's, etc. The gelcoat is just gone.

I didn't mention it the other day but has anyone had experience with Totalboat's "TotalTread Non-Skid Marine Deck Paint"?  I have had very good experience with all their other products and find them to be very good quality. A friend of mine painted his deck on his Laser with it and it looked pretty good. The results on their website look outstanding as an alternative the the really pricey products so I'm curious regarding others real world experience?

Going to follow this thread, I'm interested in redoing my non-skid as it's showing its age.
Many years ago a restored a 1974 Catalina 22 and the non-skid was just shot. I prepped the deck by using an orbital sander with 80 grit paper to smooth out the existing non-skid, it turns out it is mostly just gelcoat and it sanded and smoothed out very easily making the prep pretty simple. Not sure if our C34's decks are similar in construction but I'm not going to go tearing into it to find out without being ready to go all the way.
FYI, for my C-22 I used gray gelcoat for the non-skid, I used a 1/2" nap roller to roll it on and it stippled up very nicely creating a great non-skid surface. We owned the boat for 10 years and it held up very well.
There are MANY options out there today that weren't available years ago so I too am interested in others experience.

I have to say I agree with Alex, get after those leaks first as they do nothing but lead to further damage.
After three years of work we are getting close on our 88 C34. It hadn't been stored for 15 years like Jim's boat had, but it had been used and not maintained in any respect for a full 15 years. Everything last opening leaked and nothing worked (including the engine) on the day we purchased the boat.
It took us five full weekends working dawn till dark just to get her in good enough shape for the trip home.
A "Good Old Boat" is ALWAYS a work in progress, and I find it makes my life easier just accepting that it'll never be "done". She looks outstanding these days and my wife and I are quite proud of her and really enjoy sailing and cruising on her, but in truth I still have a list that isn't quite as long as yours but nothing is considered critical anymore....she sails and everything works again....and I'll keep pecking away at my list.
You're really going to enjoy this boat, they sail so well and are quite comfortable on longer trips. Hope you get a handle on all these chores soon so you can get out there too!!!!!

For future reference of anyone reading this thread. ANY leak of the raw water seal is bad, it should leak nothing at all and if it is even a minor leak it can and will eventually lead to bigger problems.
For instance, if you're lucky enough to keep the boat in salt water, it will eat away at the engine mounts...and it will also cause corrosion of the cast aluminum gear case cover it is mounted to. If that's not bad enough, it corrode the oil pan itself. A friend had a pin hole develop just underneath the raw water pump on his Universal M18 (Catalina 27) and you'd be surprised how quickly the pan will drain itself into the bilge from a pin hole.
Bottom line is that weep hole is an indicator of a problem that should be addressed at the first sign of a leak.

If you've got power all the way to the starter as you state and you're getting a spark when you try to jump it I'd pull the starter and bench test it. It's just two bolts (plus the electrical connections) and should be a 15 minute job to extract it. If it still remains unresponsive you can then decide to rebuild or replace.

I stripped my entire interior, bulkheads and everything and used a teak cleaner on everything that both removed the teak oil and "brightened" the wood. The interior used to be dark, it no longer is.
TMAC nailed it though, if you simply have to have the darker wood you'll have to stain it but then it will continue to darken anyway and will end up darker than the surrounding wood that wasn't refinished.
If you just go back with the teak oil it will start darkening over the next few years.....YBYC Dan.

I did remove much of the interior cabinetry to strip and refinish them in my shop and also to facilitate easier access to the water heater and counter tops. I did apply two coats of finish at home to the frames and then reinstalled them, glued the bungs in and trimmed and sanded them down, then I put a few coats over the entire frame again and the end result looks great....and I got to do the hard work in my shop and not a freezing boat in January/February.
I did remove those small bulkheads between the galley cabinet and settee area shelf and also the one just forward of the nav station. It really was the only way to get the counters out and the bulkhead over the galley ice box was rotten anyway so it needed to be replaced. Again, it was just bungs and screws so once you get used to replacing them......it's not a difficult job.

As for the cabin sole, ours was badly discolored but I was able to strip it down and refinish it, I'm pretty happy with the results but it was a lot of hard work to get it there. A good friend also bought an 88 C34 and several pieces of his cabin sole were honestly shot. He ended up buying two sheets of 1/4" teak and holly plywood from somewhere up near Annapolis and used the old flooring as a pattern, it really came out very nice and obviously makes the interior look outstanding. The cost of these two pieces of plywood was north of $500.00 and he picked them up and did all the carpentry work himself so you can see this isn't a cheap fix. Keep reading if other flooring ideas fit your life better, there are alternatives out there that may not cost as much and are easier to work with. Again...YBYC!!!!!

As for pictures, I struggled with that for while, it was the size of the photos that was the problem for me. I shoot all my photos on my phone so I've found that if I resize them on my phone I can post them from there with no issues. Hope all this helps brother!!!! 

We bought our boat in August 2019 and I gutted it over the winter and refinished the entire interior of the boat. Everyone has their own method and frankly, it makes for some great reading. You need to use the method that makes you happy.
As for me, for years now I've used spar varnish (satin) on my boat interiors with no problems. I did use a two part teak cleaner on all the parts removed from the boat and also on those that I didn't remove, I believe ours had been coated in teak oil and teak cleaner is all it needed to remove the old coating(s)  It's a VERY messy process to do it this way (in the boat) but the results were worth it in my opinion. The interior teak brightened right up and after some lite sanding it finished up nicely, just be sure to let it dry completely after the teak cleaning process. .
Also, be very careful sanding any of the bulkheads, that's a teak verneer plywood and it is very, very thin so don't get carried away with a sander of you will most certainly regret it.
The interiors of our Catalina's are built as components and then installed, so getting any parts out isn't as tough as disassembling a boat that has cabinets that were built in place and are generally much harder to disassemble.
Some teak bungs will need to be removed and other components also removed to get at the galley counter top. The counter tops themselves are screwed in from underneath, all of them are like this and depending on the components you have to remove, it really wasn't the hardest part of the job IMHO. Sinks seem to be held in place with silicone caulk so that needs to be cut to remove them and this greatly increases access to the screws for the counter tops.
You'll get lots of ideas as you keep reading and these are just my thoughts. Best of luck if you decide to do this job, it's not a job for the faint of heart but once it's finished (or in this case "refinshed") you'll be able to look with pride on YOUR boat.

Ron's statement about the exterior strainer isn't far off base. I had one on my last boat and we had that boat for 14 years with zero issues with any clogs. My good friend with a slightly larger boat of the same manufacturer had an exterior strainer and never had any issues.
I'm not arguing with Rod but I just don't believe they are to be avoided at all cost.

On another note, another good friend was motoring out of Baltimore harbor on his Catalina 30 and the engine started to overheat so he went thru the usual procedure to find the problem.  Once he traced the issue to the water intake he removed the hose and to his surprise he found himself staring at a small fish that had been sucked into the thru hull (no strainer)....effectively blocking the water flow to the engine. There wasn't much left of the hapless little fellow but it made for a great story sitting in the cockpits that evening.

Strainers, no strainers....there are arguments for both. YBYC

Recently I discovered some cracks in the fiberglass tabbing of the stringers in our 1988 C34. The bilge always has a bit of water in it and last winter I made a concerted effort to keep it as dry as possible. I'd vacuum out the water only to discover a small puddle or two developing at the base of the second stringer. Upon very close inspection I find there are a few cracks in the tabbing, when the bilge had water in it this water apparently got thru the cracks and soaked the core material and would weep out when the bilge was dried out.
Fast forward to this spring when I had to get a hose to the bilge area so I reached under the floor and drilled an oversized hole thru the stringer with the thought of sealing the coring material to prevent further moisture from getting to the core....the drill went thru the glass (about 1/4" FRP laminate) and immediately went thru to the other side....the core is MUSH....a very very wet oily MUSH.
So while the brochure in the above post covers the construction methods of newer Catalina yachts, it don't believe it was meant to cover every model back to the beginning. 

I'm concerned about this problem but I know it's existed for a long time now and I'm keeping a very close eye on the affected area and it doesn't appear to be getting worse.
I'll be contacting Catalina to see what they can offer in the way of repair advise and over the winter of 2023/2024 I'll be pulling the boat and addressing this issue along with a few others.
I'll want to get a thread going (I honestly haven't looked to see if there is one out there already) to cover this repair in case something like this shows up in someone else's boat.

Our original (vintage 1988) strainer was cracked when we bought our boat in 2019 and I needed something quickly to get the boat thru the delivery. As it turns out I'm quite happy with this setup and have no plans to replace it.
I don't have any clear photos of our setup but would be happy to get one if you want it. The placement is pretty simple though, it's screwed directly to the wall of the engine compartment and I positioned the top of the strainer right at the boats water line so it's easy to access and clean out the basket. I do close the thru hull to do this but don't really have to.  I will say that there is a 1" to 1.5" offset of the hose where it connects from the bottom of the strainer to the seacock so a rigid dowel won't work to push out any debris, but it's a simple chore to loosen the clamps and remove the hose to get to the seacock to clean it out.