Messages

Lapper Provenance
My 110 is in "close to new" condition.  I used it mostly during the first year after I splashed Freya.  I subsequently bought a 130, then a blade, and the 110 was regulated to the garage.  New, these sails go for in the range of $1,100 - $1,300 and I was thinking about selling mine for half that.  I've checked Minneys, Bacon and the Sail Warehouse and their prices are in the $400 ("bad" condition") to $800 range.  I was thinking in the neighborhood of $500.  Any offers?  The sail is in my garage in Santa Clara, the boat is in Alameda.  This weekend isn't good for me, but perhaps next weekend we can get together and I can show you the sail (If your boat is in the Bay area, we could even bend it on your forestay and see how it looks.  For you out of towners, if you are interested, I can spread the sail out and take a few digital photos of it.

George Bean
Freya #1476
Alameda, Ca.

My guess is that you may have something larger than a 130 genoa.  The 130 has an LP of 17' 7".  The length of the corresponding foot dimension is dependant upon how high or low the sail maker places the clew.   For example, my 130's foot is 18' 8" or approximately five percent longer than the LP.  The higher the clew, the longer the foot for a given LP.  I would guess that with a foot of 21 feet you may be looking at a 150 or 155 (how low is that clew?  Do you have to skirt the sail over the lifelines?)

Speaking of sails for sale, I have a factory 110, (royal) blue UV cover that was only used for about a year or two and has been languishing in my garage for last five years.  If anyone is interested, make me a (reasonable) offer.

George Bean
Freya #1476
Alameda, Ca.

Vic, is it possible to meet with you this Saturday?  Freya is in Marina Village, Gate 8, Slip M11.  I will be there Saturday doing some engine maintenance and would like to see your seacock and compare it to Freya's.  Did Mariner Boatyard replace the (broken) valve or did they repair and reinstall it?  It would be informative if I could see the inner workings of your valve and possibly post a couple of pictures of it.

The Marlon seacocks are manufactured by Forespar, who supplies seacocks on all of Catalina's boats as well as other builders (Hunter and Beneteau being two).  I am surprised that your valve is a new model as the case looks like the ones I have on Freya (#1476, year 2000).  The models we have on our boats are for OEM which are different than what is sold at West Marine. The OEM model having that (dubious) nifty built in plug behind the handle.  I understand your concern, but if it is any consolation, my guess is over eighty percent of the boats at Marina Village have the same or similar valve.  There are no user serviced parts inside the valve and opening up either the valve housing or stem is going to cause a leak.  The valve handle is on a keyed shaft which takes up the force of opening and closing.  The handle screw is there to hold the handle in place and under normal operation should not strip or otherwise pull out.  Like you, I think that the valve handle feels flimsy and I would have liked Forespar to have beefed this part up.  We do an "exercise the seacocks" session about once a year to ensure smooth operation.  As I recall (from a technical talk given by Forespar), the little mini bung in the handle is so you can bung the thru hull from the water side in order to replace the seacock. Yes, it requires going over the side (why do they always think we all live in Florida or SoCal?).  If you do this, you need to tie a sting to it so you can retrieve the bung later.  Our contingency plans for a broken seacock is to unscrew the valve from the thru hull and hammer in a soft wooden bung plug in the opening.  Opening up a thru hull while the boat's in the water is a little eye opening at first, but if you have your tools laid out and don't drop anything, you can swap out a seacock with no more than five (ten tops) gallons of water coming in (hint: have the valve in the "open" position when threading it on the thru hull).  Both Stu and I have both replaced seacocks and lived to tell the tale.  If you are still not convinced on the safety of Marlon, you can always swap out the Forespar Marlon with bronze seacocks from Perko (probably cheaper than a $500k Valiant).  You can get these from either Svendsens or Seapower Marine in Oakland.  The downside of bronze as they suffer from two types of corrosion, galvanic (you will need to bond all them to your engine) and electrolyte (you monitor the color and replace when the metal turns "red").  Come to think of it, the corrosion (and subsequent failure) of bronze seacocks is why the industry went to Marlon in the fist place.

A couple of thoughts to consider:  Chances are that your original factory main is gone.  Mainsails tend to loose their shape in the belly, making it hard to control draft and they also go bad in the leach.  The full batten design will mask these symptoms for years and if you're not performance oriented, the main will last decades (with a lot of aggressive trimming).  Using the Cunningham and "flattening reef" will reduce belly for the lower half of the sail.  Tightening the leech cord to point of developing a "hook" in the trailing edge will control a loose leach.  You can get better pointing off of the main by "upping" the traveler to the windward side so the boom is always at (or above) centerline.  The trade-off is weather helm.  You might also want to check to see if your rig is in tune. Being based in San Francisco, I haven't had much experience in trimming 150 Genoas, but for me, they tend to have a wider tacking angle than a 130.  Try pulling the fairleads way back on their track.  The classic way to get a genoa to point better is to use Barber Haulers to pull the loaded genoa sheet closer to centerline.  This never worked well for me on the Catalina unfortunately.  Incidentally, the reason why 110s and 130s are so popular is the 110 is standard with the boat and the 130 is the current class standard for Northern California.  Catalina now sells the 135 as their "standard" genoa along with the 110.  Many people in the U.S. use the 150 as it covers the lower wind ranges quite nicely.

Sail Materials:  Although PHRF will allow for extended roaches these days, I'm not in favor of them.  They tend to hang up on the backstay when tacking close hauled, especially in light winds.  It can be very frustrating when you have to constantly fight this.  Shelfs or loose footed mains will give you much better belly control with using only halyard and outhaul tension.  Shelfs or loose footed usually have a full batten on top followed by partial battens.  Both will accommodate a Dutchman flaking system.  Good quality high modulus/high thread count Dacron is hard to beat and will last a long time.  The only time you need to think about going to arimids like Kevlar is if you are really performance oriented and want to reduce weight aloft and have very low, even stretch properties.  I personally prefer the Polyester laminate as it fits in right in the middle.

Your 150 might be sagging because it might be made out a heavier weight Dacron cloth.  Sail makers do this in order to increase the wind range of the sail.  The 150 is really a light air only, specialty sail and should be made out of the lightest materials possible (this is where Kevlar comes in).  Something you might try is going to a pair of lighter genoa sheets.  Heavy sheets really cause big genoas to sag when beam reaching or running in light air.  Asymmetrics have a fairly narrow wind angle and never point better than 60 degrees AWA. They don't point well because you can't pull tight tension on the luff and the sail doesn't trim close to the boat.  I get my best VMG at 90-135 degrees.

George Bean
s/v Freya  #1476

Hey wait a minute!  There were eight of us, remember, I was there too!  What was truly notable about Saturday was out of all divisions from some six races/regattas, we were the only one that all eight that had signed up, started, and more importantly, all eight finished.  We were in the only single/double handed regatta that day, the rest were crewed events.  That weekend, a late winter storm system passed through Northern California producing heavy rain, thunderstorms, a funnel cloud, seas outside the Gate to twenty feet and true winds consistently in the mid twenties and sustained gusts well into the thirties.  Incidentally, over half of our division were flying our usual 130 Genoas and single reefed mains.  The C34 is one well laid out and sturdy boat.  I really don't think you could do much better in the price range.  I also know of a C34 that did the Pacific Cup to Hawaii.  Does the Mk I have the bow water tank? If so, that might pose a problem in installing a baby stay.  That stay might not be used that much anyways as I don't think you'll be able to pull in any mast bend with it on our masthead rigged boats.  Likewise, I don't think the running backs would help the trim that much.  Have you considered a hydraulic back stay adjuster?  Storage will be a problem as our interiors were designed to maximize the living, not the storage space.  A little creativity ought to glean out some more storage space.  Extended cruising?  How far and where?  I'd love to hear your plans!

How does everyone rig jack lines?  When I rig from bow to stern cleat, the line goes over a portion of cabin roof (Mk II boat) which puts some slack in the line.  Routing outside the shrouds keeps tension but seems to be less desirable as you have to go outside the shroud to go forward.  Also, to keep the jack line inside of the jib sheets, I have to route it inside of the fair leads.  Will this have a tendency to jam the fair lead?