I managed to get 3 days out, she def fun for my first cat and I looked forward to many more this coming year..

Over the winter break I plan on replacing the tramp, bent dolphin striker rod and assoc. fittings. While shes apart I plan on polishing the hulls etc.

Does anybody have a suggestion of parts to replace or maintain while the hulls are apart?
Any tricks to know for disassembling the hulls? and reassembling the hulls?


thanks

I wouldn't dissasemble it any more than you have to. Just detach the straps on one side of the front beam. That's all you need to do to get the tramp out.

that was my first thought keep it simple, but I figured this would be a good oportunity to polish the hulls with ease. Also, I plan on Marintex-ing a small section of the keel areas from beaching. Are you saying that if I remove both hulls I could be opeining up a bag of worms so to speak?

Well, you'd need to re-align the hulls. I also worry about the nuts that the strap bolts engage. The fewer times you muck with them the better IMHO.

It's not rocket science, but not something to do if you don't have to either.

Gotcha, thanks for the input. I have more to think about

i can only comment on my experience with a nacra 5.2 where hull alignment is very easy and the top tuning advice is to actually slightly misalign hulls slightly toed out...

if you want to clean up the hulls and do a bottom job properly it is hard to see how doing so with the beams on is possible without lots of extra work

if you are worried about breaking the captive nuts free use a torque wrench to loosen the 1st bolt and see what torque is starts to move at, and or, even a mirror and spray on the threads in the hull to make sure they come out smoothly

Ah no. Good way to make it a pig in light air.

True for a bridle foil boat like a 5.8NA, maybe not true if you have bridle wires.

Don't know if you're interested, but I have 5.8 in Santa Barbara I'm thinking about selling cheap...

Matt 805-708-1724

Why would you say that? Would it not act like a funnel for the water to pass between the hulls upwind and downwind? I don't even want to think of the stresses of the hulls fighting each other. Would it not try and make the hulls roll towards each other from the top of the deck? I'm not seeing the benefit.

i don't toe-out and only mentioned it because someone seemed worried that cracking the beam bolts could lead to alignment problems. the 5.2 at least seems very easy to align with it's limiter straps riveted to the hulls and if you are worried about not getting perfect alignment then err on the side of toe-out rather than toe-in

http://www.goosemarine.com.au/Articles%20%7C%20Photos

My understanding is that bridle wires pinch the bows in slightly. So to have the hulls straight when the rig is loaded up, you need to start out with them toed out a little bit.

With a bridle foil, the forstay load on the bows has much less of a horizontal component, so it doesn't pull them in much, so you should not toe them out.

OK that makes sense, kind of. But I still see the hulls rolling towards each other. Either way I see no real benefit to toeing out, but I may be full of [censored] also.

I reviewed the assembly instructions. From what I've read there doesn't seem to too much that could misalign. Pretty much line up the hulls, butt the fwd cross bar the hulls and bolt her up. Or do the fasteners have a ton of hole slop?

But I do agree about the unknown problems with breaking torque of perfectly fine fasteners. I guess I'll swing it based on the removal of the min required removal for the tramp install.

Hey there, I personally don't think you will have much to worry about on getting the bolts out, usually the problem is the last owner overtorquing them and stripping the threads on the aluminum insert glassed into the hull. Several of the Nacs' I've had actually had longer bolts and a lock nut inside reachable through an access port, so if you keep spinning a bolt and it's not coming out...of course reaching inside got harder and harder as my forearms got all Popeyed out after lots of catsailing.LOL
On the tramp issue, none of the ones I had could get re-tramped without disassembly ( this is all from personal experience trying to do it all myself). They would come off, but not back on without several helpers trying to inch the edges into the track while somebody pulls from behind. You do have to drop the mast to get the boat apart, and it's suprisingly hard to mess with the mast with no tramp on, hard to reach up high enough for stepping it, so don't pull the tramp before dropping the stick (guess how I know)! I took off one front corner set of bolts, and the opposite back corner set of bolts so that the hulls would support each other as they slide in to get the slack in the tramp, if you do same side the one hull tries to flop over.
If you have time, the new style tramps have webbing sewn down both edges that either lace to slides in the tracks or directly to the hull. I did my own 'cause I have a sewing machine, laced to slides in the existing tracks. Then you never need to demount the crossbars for tramp repairs. Some don't like it because of the sheets getting out through the gaps in the lacing though...

On the alignment, the toe in/out is pretty set, but you do have to get the bows the same height relative to each other.

The more I think about full dis-assembly the more I'm less likely to do it. with the tramp off I'll polish beow the tramp. Good enough.

Also.
I will be replacing the dolphin striker rod, I need to cut it cause its bent. would it be easier to disconnect the hull first or it doesn't really matter?

Is it bent above or below the main beam? If above, you can probably straighten the rod in place, just be careful not to gall the threads. I don't think you need to remove the hulls in order to replace the rod, but I'm not sure.

The Rod is bent above the beam. My experience with yielded metal is to replace the part. Besides I already have the rod and assoc h/w. This doesn't look too hard. I plan on measuring the existing cross beams prebend and duplicating it during re-assembly.

The fun part will be cutting the rod <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />