Last year, a thunderstorm tossed my 1971 H-16 and caused quite a bit of damage. I discovered a large crack yesterday in the front crossbar, just inboard of the starboard casting. It runs through a jib track rivet, and goes 3/4 of the way around the bar. Obviously, I won't be sailing until this is fixed.





I'm located in Tempe, Arizona, and I'm interested in replacing the crossbar with a used one. If anyone has an old H-16 front crossbar for sale, let me know. I understand that shipping one of these might be pricey.

I'm planning to remove the tramp, remove the striker, and then drill out the rivets in the castings. I have a heavy-duty manual rivet puller, but will this serve for the massive SS rivets that hold these parts together?

If anyone has gone through this, I'd appreciate any tips and tricks to doing the job right. Thanks!

Rick
<< cross-posted from H-16 forum, to reach a broader audience >>

Try Jeremy at Surf City Catamarans.

Can you pull the rivets out fairly easily? Yes. The big thing is YOU HAVE to remove the castings from the hulls (at least that's the way I did it). These castings are very brittle and liable to crack when doing this procedure; my best idea is to squirt your favorite corrosion eater between the castings and the posts on the hulls, then gently pull or tap the castings of the hulls. I'm sure others have done this more than I have and have some other tips.

I've got a stack of those laying around. I would just remove the crossbar from the hulls and replace the whole thing as one unit. Sometimes the x bars are too difficult to remove from the castings.

100% agree with Jeremy. It should be just bolted to the hull posts, unless someone glued/epoxied it at some point...

Dealers often have tons of these parts lying around when they get rid of old boats with bad hulls. Someone always needs crossbars or castings.

Mike

Thanks for the tip about the brittle corner castings. I'll watch those closely.

Rick

Just drive it to Santa Cruz and let Jeremy do it for you...

It looks like I'll be able to get a whole assembly from Jeremy and have it shipped for a VERY reasonable cost. I'm encouraged by the fact that I'm not the first Hobie owner to go through this. I sure appreciate the tips and referrals!

Thanks, all.
Rick

I've done it a few times... cracked the first one I took off.... buy a rubber mallet, if ya don't have one use a short 2x4... don't hit to hard, taps will do it. A few cuss words help

I agree with popeyez always cuss first and have beer then you have that part over with.