Our Commodore, Earle Ellefsen [C380 #271, Valkyrie], discovered chafe near one end of his mainsail furling line. He decided to turn the line end-for-end, and remove the chafed area as there was excess line length. The key step in accomplishing this was to remove the bolt, which locks-in the furling line, near the bottom of the furler. Of course, an “opportunity” soon arose when Earle realized that the bolt was Stainless Steel in an aluminum furler and, with a few years of salt-water environment, was thoroughly corroded in-place. Many shots of WD-40 later, nothing had changed! Early attempts at removal quickly resulted in losing the slot– or, as Earle put it: “it torqued open”. Obviously the bolt should have had a more substantial gripping head.
Once the slot was destroyed, heavy locking pliers are the obvious choice, right? Wrong– their
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STEERING, BOOM HEIGHT, CLEATS, GPS
Wolfgang Doebel, Warren Elliott
2/1/2002 Hull #: 336
The following was emailed to me from a new 380 owner from Canada:
Hello Warren, Have you ever come across one of the following? Do you have any ideas to help?
The steering mechanism on my C380, at times seems, to get partially hung up, especially when moving through the neutral position. The problem is not severe but it takes out a lot of fun from steering. Also one must always expect some problems to happen if the cause of the concern is not fully understood. There is an Autopilot ST6000 plus connected to the rudder post, but it does not seem to be the cause, as the problem does not exist when traveling under power alone (no pressure on the rudder, not much tension on the cables). I have investigated the mechanical condition of the
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Those of us with hull numbers up to about 100 have masts made by Z-Spar [now US Spars]. One issue with them consists of a relatively high gate: the opened part of the slot or tunnel where our mainsail slides do their thing.
The gate allows the slides to enter or leave the tunnel for installing/removing our mainsail. With the sail installed, the gate is “closed” via an angled handle that locks into the mast just above the opening thus retaining the slides. Two problems ensue with this configuration: first, the 1st reef cringle cannot be brought down to the boom, as it should be for a proper reef; Catalina authorizing the installation of “jack lines” solved this on my boat.
Second, the height of the sail’s headboard requires climbing the two mast steps to attach/detach the halyard and
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Shortly after taking delivery of “Sound of Silence” hull #257 in July 2000, we noticed some cracks and apparent corrosion around the circumference of the mast step [collar] that sits at the base of the mast and is attached to the cabin roof [and compression post below]. The mast fits into the collar and is held in place by a lip that goes all the way around. There is a drawing of the part on page 26 of the Catalina manual.
There are 8 stainless clevis pins that protrude upward through 10 holes [two holes unused]. These pins, which support halyard turning-blocks, are the source of the dissimilar-metal type corrosion that occurred on our boat and on at least 3 or 4 others I have heard of. The corrosion, in just a few months, caused our mast step to crack completely
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