What could I expect for tear down and setup times om a tornado?
Does everything need to come off? Or can some of the rigging be stowed attached? Mast up is not an option.
Any other drawbacks to a tornado?
Also, how tall is the rig when tilted on a tilt trailer?
And, Where could I find plans to build a tilt setup?
And
And
And

It takes 2 hours to assemble a Tornado from a breakdown trailer. Tearing it down takes 1 hour. At least for us when we both had good routines and knew the job.

We tore it down completely every time. With a tilt trailer you can save quite some time as the trampoline can be attached and you can actually trailer the mast rigged over very short distances.

Contact Mike Dobbs for tilt trailer info.

You can get in touch with a great Tornado community over at the Yahoo group: TornadoCat

The Tornado is an incredible boat, but without mast up storage or a thriving Tornado fleet close by I would not go for one and I love that boat. I sailed and owned tornados for 8 years.. They are quite hard to get the best from.

I agree with Rolf. My tornado has seen little use due to the lack of mast up storage. It takes me 4 hours the first time I set it up and 2 to breakdown. Once I have set it up a couple of times, I am back down to 2 up and 1 down.

If you have a tilt trailer that carries the boat upside down and rotates it down onto is dolly, setup/tear down
time is substantially reduced

Only the rudder assembly and mast are removed from the boat.
The spin halyard is detached from the spinnaker, cleared from the mast and coiled in the pocket on the tramp.
The shrouds are detached from the mast only and secured to the hiking straps.
The forestay, jib halyard and trapeeze equipment are tied to the base of the mast.
Everything else is secured in place to the boat.

30 minutes from parking to putting up the sails.

Beautiful boat and a really nice package! Gougeon or Houlton cold moulded? Is it yours?

1980 Houlton boat. Tornado's are special primarily due to their
10' beam, but the resulting difficulty of transporting and assembling the boats has always been the primary factor in its lack of popularity. When I had a breakdown trailer it was such a hassle to put the boat together that I got a Prindle 18-2 (my all time favorite boat) and sailed that much more than the T.

About 10 years ago Greg Scace and I designed and built some tilt trailers that worked really well. A rotating cradle picks the platform up off the blocks and and rotates it 135 degrees so it rests upside down at at a 45 degree angle. It's a simple wire rope mechanisim that does the lifting. I hooked mine up to a small 12V winch. I think Greg still has plans. To me it was always worth the hassle to build the trailer because the boat is so great to sail.
Kevin Cook

Just qurious: Do you know the weight of the boat today and what is the hull and beam seating stiffness like? (I assume the beams are the small diameter ones). I always try to get real info on wooden boats and how they hold up under high stress like on a T.

Rolf,
I built a Houlton Tornadu in 1981. The platform weight is 284 lbs. (apologize for english units!). But that is the class minimum. A 4 oz. layer of glass on the outside will add 6 lbs. The connections are not as stiff as Marstron but I don't have any numbers on this. Perhaps David knows?
Kevin

I think wood is even better than glass/foam sandwich (lets keep carbon out if it) when it comes to being stiff/string and durable that is why I ask

What happens to the centreboards. how come they don't fall out when you store it upsidedown? do you take them out to store them separately?

Now on a tangent I told my wife yesterday that when she wants to start sailing again we are going to have to get an F18, she stears i pull the strings, she didn't like that idea or stearing until i told her that we would be better with the brains at the back and brawn at the front. When i said "or a tornado", were she replied "Cool!"

God I love her.

I built my trailer from CAD plans I bought from Greg Scace.The plans were wone of my best investments.
The boat has held up to heavy use in San Francisco Bay conditions. I pulled out one chainplate due to operator error but have had no other structural problems with the boat.
The platform is not as stiff as the Marstroms primarily because of the small cross section beams, but given the choice I would rather upgrade the boat with Marstrom foils rather than fat beams.
The hulls have been holed and repaired a couple of times and the platform is still within 2kg of minimum weight. I have only seen one Gougeon/Houlton/Walker boat that needed correctors. Building to minimum weight in wood is difficult.
The beams seats are epoxy/micro balloons and do wear. I redid the beam seats 4 years ago and have not taken the boat apart since then.

The cold molded Tornado has outlived all the glass cats I have owned. I think the strip plank F-16's are worth the extra time and effort in construction.

I spend my day on a Tornado today. Nothing that exciting however, it's one of the rib we use for safety duty...

I would rather have used one of those wooden tornado!

How tall is it when sitting on the tilt trailer?

On my trailer it was about 8 feet 10 inches high if memory serves me. And David's trailer is the same design now that I look at it more closely.
Kevin

Sharp eyes. The centerboards are held forward in the slot by shock cords that disappears in the beam. The bottom board can only fall down a couple of inches before it hits the deck of the trailer, and I always put a strap around the top hull at the cb case so the board is restrained from falling out, even though it has never shown any tendency to do so. The trailer is heavy enough that even crossing the Golden Gate Bridge with
25-35mph gusts hitting at 90 degrees it does not blow around noticably.

I calculated it could take 60 MPH sideways without tipping with 300 lbs of ballast on the deck of the trailer. I used a couple of cast concrete blocks. I think Greg used something more elegant like lead filled steel tubing. Weight of the trailer/ballast was 940 LBS.

Is this including the height of the trailer? My shop is 11' tall and I need to know if it will fit.
Also, how hard would it be to right? I have a large righting bag and total skipper and crew weight #360.
Are there areas on the Marstrom that I should check spacifically for wear? My understanding is that this boat was used for olympic training somewhere along the line, but I dont know if it has been rode hard and put up wet since then.

azcat,
I have capsized several times on my boats and always been able to self right without help. The mast tube is sealed so you have a minute to get crew weight out to windward before the boat turtles. We use a righting line on the mast base that hooks into the trap harness and thats all you need. The only exception was once in a violent squall when we blown end over end and dismasted. If you ever do turn turtle on a 10 foot wide boat you would need help to right her. But there is so much more stability you have to really work to capsizie in the first place. 11 feet is enough headroom to fit the trailer with the boat on it.

I just got a Tornado about a month and a half ago. It took me about 3 to 4 hours to set it up the first time. Now, it's about 2 hours together and about an hour and 20 minutes to take it apart and get it on the trailer.

My T is also a Marstrom. They should be pretty solid. I didn't find any problems with mine. I would check for wear and tear on the standing and running rigging mainly.

Also, the TornadoCats Yahoo group has lots of good info. Mike Dobbs has plans for a tilt trailer.

Hope this helps,

--Jorge