New owner...direction and info needed.

[morrobaymac]

Can't really go wrong with a $150 boat that comes with its own foredeck mounted bath tub can ya?

I have 2 things to add:

Make sure before replacing the standing rigging that that foot of the compression post and or the cabin top above the compression post have not in any way sagged. If you fit out with all new standing rigging without making sure everything is as it should be you might find yourself short. Don't ask me how I know.

Also: Your question about how the compression post attaches to the cabin roof: the way your picture shows it is typical of those earlier Macs. An angle bracket and 2 bolts. Works fine since most compression post forces are downward. On the bottom of the post its not fastened at all - its a squeeze fit.

The compression post looks pretty good top and bottom, and there isnt any noticable give to it. I'll go bounce on it tomorrow and pay closer attention though. The deck has a nice even curve to it, doesn't look like its sagging at all anyway.

I didn't really mean the compression post attachment since like you said it doesn't have any lateral loads. Its the mast step attachment bolts. They don't seem to thread into anything other than the deck? No nuts or anything underneath. Are the nuts embedded inside the deck?

I concur with Catigale that the standing rigging swages and eyelets look pretty good--better than my 3-year old rigging did. A little green patina on the nicopress doesn't mean anything's wrong.

I'd go ahead and rig it and see how it all looks. Examine each swage and eyelet, and if there's no broken strands or signs of serious stress, you won't need to re-do it. You can likely work the sailmaker's thimbles inside the eyelets back into place if you want to.

I wanted to step the mast today and check it all out, but ran out of time after pressure washing it inside and out and adjusting valve lash on a 33ft donzi.

It isn't so much the green patina that's throwing me on the rigging as much as how much then eye is bent. Theres a couple places mid line that look like they've bent a little more than they should have as well. Stainless work hardens pretty easy, that coupled with the two that do need to be replaced, I'm leaning toward replacing them all just for the price of mind. I'm learning that doing myself should be pretty cheap and easy on a boat this size anyway. I'm new to sailing, the less worrying about unknown rigging leaves more room to lean from the countless other mistake I'm surely gonna make.

[topcat0399]

Ahhh - I see what you mean; the 3 thru bolts that hold on the mast step/tabernacle.

In your photo I can only see 2 of them and to me it looks like the nuts have been twisted off.
They are not there. Now; it isn't the end of the world or even dangerous. All those 3 bolts really do is keep
the tabernacle from kicking around when stepping the mast.

More importantly - on our old venture those bolts had completely rusted through and had been poorly bedded.
This allowed water inside the core between the compression post/cabin roof glass layer and the deck top layer rotting
out all of that core piece. I took the mast step off and cut the top open, dug out all of the rotted plywood core, installed a new plywood core, glued and glassed the old piece back in.

Sanded and painted. Redrilled all of the hardware holes, potted them all, countersunk and bedded everything with butyl tape. Used new bolt hardware along with heavy stainless washers as backers.

Now if any of those bolts leak again it will come directly into the cabin as an alert and leave the core nice and dry.

I

[81venture]

SMALL soft spots in the deck can be fixed by drilling a few smaller holes around the area, and then filling it with "great stuff" foam until it comes out the top of the other holes....I have used this method for years. Again for smaller soft spots only. If you have a lot of flex then yes ripping out the plywood and re-doing it is best. But this stiffens it up, and slows the rot down. It's a "Good Enuff" approach that is easy, and light on the wallet. After it dries cut the protruding bits of foam, sand, glass it in and spot paint it. This has always worked good, and I actually did the entire top deck of a 20' Ensenada this way (bigger spots than I usually would do) and it still came out fine. top deck is still solid after a year...but again I usually use this method only on smaller spots.

Rig the boat yourself, it's not that hard. I told Navy Sailor the same thing I will tell you. Now that you enter the "sailing world" you will find a lot of boat snobbery, and if you are on other forums you will quickly find out that the "ONLY WAY" to "Do it right" is always the most costliest solution according to their experts.

I've been in the boat business 20 years, but sailboats only 2 and I was amazed how "white trash" my ways of thinking and doing things were regarded on other forums. Luckily HERE you will find stand up guys who will not judge, and will indeed tell you how to "Git-R-Dun" without just telling you you have to spend $14k on rebuilding the boat from the ground up because that's the only way to do it right ya know

I caught hull on another forum because I decided to not use my original mast on our VN23 because it was such a pain in the ass to setup. I run a 22 Ft mast from an O'day now and the boat is sloop rigged. I can hoist it up with one arm, pin the forestay and I am done. It was not well received, but ya know what it works for me. We've been to the coast and all over and it sails just fine. The Guys here did not blast me for it...and instead were intrigued, so you are in the right place.

But yours might not be as bad as you think....As suggested rig it up, take it out. I would replace frayed or broken wires, but your swags looked good from the pic I see. We're talking trailer sailor....unless you are going to do some kind of crazy competitive sailing in 40mph winds you'll be fine.

Spreaders can be made from conduit at home depot (as a temporary thing, until you get your rig right.) and when we re-rigged a catalina 22 we used aluminum stock left over from cutting up an older swim ladder. After comparing the metal pole from the ladder to another boats existing stays we realized it would work just fine...It was free too

Cheers and welcome to the forum

read my adventures if you have time and you'll see you can be a complete Noob and still do fine

[Russ]

Spreaders can be made from conduit at home depot (as a temporary thing, until you get your rig right.) and when we re-rigged a catalina 22 we used aluminum stock left over from cutting up an older swim ladder. After comparing the metal pole from the ladder to another boats existing stays we realized it would work just fine...It was free too

This is a benefit of relatively small boats. The stresses and forces are not that great. Using the perfect material is not that critical.

Swim ladder huh? One cool thing I find of Mac owners on this forum is their ever creative ways to modify their boats.

There are few parts to these boats that are custom. So for the most part, you can go down to your local hardware store and buy a hunk of aluminum rod and make spreaders and such.

The best boat is the one that gets used. Doesn't matter if it's perfect or meets other's approval, the fact that you are out enjoying it makes it better than the $250k boat that sits unused.

[Tomfoolery]

Spreaders can be made from conduit at home depot (as a temporary thing, until you get your rig right.)

Swim ladder huh? One cool thing I find of Mac owners on this forum is their ever creative ways to modify their boats.

There are few parts to these boats that are custom. So for the most part, you can go down to your local hardware store and buy a hunk of aluminum rod and make spreaders and such.

My spreaders came from Lowes. The wall thickness is a bit thinner than stock, but stock spreaders were broken off from abuse with the mast down and laying on the lifelines, so Lowes it was.

Gotta get (or make) new ones, though, as they're getting kinked at the sockets again. Spreader buckling under sail isn't very good for the mast.

[Wind Chime]

Tomfool

... while you're at it, you might consider inserting wood dowels into the spreaders for some addtional strengh, especially when the mast is down and the spreaders are on the deck. When I did it the cost was about $10 bucks, took about 1/2 hour, added a little more piece of mind for me.

My spreaders came from Lowes. The wall thickness is a bit thinner than stock, but stock spreaders were broken off from abuse with the mast down and laying on the lifelines, so Lowes it was.

Gotta get (or make) new ones, though, as they're getting kinked at the sockets again.

[Tomfoolery]

Tomfool

... while you're at it, you might consider inserting wood dowels into the spreaders for some addtional strengh, especially when the mast is down and the spreaders are on the deck. When I did it the cost was about $10 bucks, took about 1/2 hour, added a little more piece of mind for me.

Thanks, but I take mine off and store them below.

Little risk of bending them that way.

Medium risk of starting to raise the mast and realizing I forgot to put them back on.

Huge risk of having numerous lines on the wrong side of the spreaders once the mast is up, including the forestay.

(I just did the last two a few days ago, since it was the first time I've had the mast up this year, and everything was stripped off for the winter. )

[Russ]

I take mine off and store them below.

That certainly is the safest place, however, how do you put them back on and get the position right with the shrouds?
I disconnect them from the base (1 bolt) and then bungee them to the mast keeping the cables still attached.

[Tomfoolery]

I take mine off and store them below.

That certainly is the safest place, however, how do you put them back on and get the position right with the shrouds?
I disconnect them from the base (1 bolt) and then bungee them to the mast keeping the cables still attached.

I pop the end caps out, which stay with the shrouds. The shrouds are tight enough in service that the lee side shrouds never go slack, so little risk of them popping out. But I'll probably drill them out one of these days and use midget tractor pins like the larger ones at the mast sockets. Three years on plain ol' nickel plated pins from Home Depot, and not a hint of rust, so cheapies are fine with me.

I also have flag halyard blocks riveted to the bottom of both, so it's marginally easier to remove the spreaders, coil the halyards, and stow them below than it would be to have yet another mess of line (coiled or not) to trip over on deck. In a parking lot. Where it's both a long way down, and a hard stop at the bottom.

[Russ]

I take mine off and store them below.

That certainly is the safest place, however, how do you put them back on and get the position right with the shrouds?
I disconnect them from the base (1 bolt) and then bungee them to the mast keeping the cables still attached.

I pop the end caps out, which stay with the shrouds. The shrouds are tight enough in service that the lee side shrouds never go slack, so little risk of them popping out. But I'll probably drill them out one of these days and use midget tractor pins like the larger ones at the mast sockets. Three years on plain ol' nickel plated pins from Home Depot, and not a hint of rust, so cheapies are fine with me.

I also have flag halyard blocks riveted to the bottom of both, so it's marginally easier to remove the spreaders, coil the halyards, and stow them below than it would be to have yet another mess of line (coiled or not) to trip over on deck. In a parking lot. Where it's both a long way down, and a hard stop at the bottom.

Interesting. I'll have to try that next time.

[Tomfoolery]

Just make sure your rig is tight enough that they don't ever go slack, especially when heeled hard over. Wouldn't be good for the end cap to pop out. It doesn't go very far in; nothing remotely close to the socket depth. Putting the screw back in would, of course, prevent that.

[morrobaymac]

Well I finally made it to the DMV today to try and register the thing. It would seem that although the most recent sticker on the boat is from 94, the vessel is still in the computer. The DMV being the ever so helpful people they are, told me they can't release the actual owners info to me.

When I got home I called the guy I bought it from in hopes of getting any kind of info about the person who abandoned the boat of his property. As it would be much easier to tag if I could obtain a bill of sale from them. The piece of work proceeds to tell me that the boat wasn't actually abandoned on their property at all, his daughter found it on the side of the road and brought it home a few months ago. They f#/ing stole it, and then sold it to me. I told him I was calling the cops and hung up on him.

So I call the local P.D. in hopes of getting an officer over to my place so they could check to see if its stolen or not. This way when they run the CF numbers, I can record the radio conversation on my scanner when dispatch responds with the the owners info....no such luck, he just asked for the CF number and checked it while I was on the line.

The good news is that it has NOT been reported stolen. So thats good at least. Despite the 20 year old tags on it, it was registered up until 2009. I'm hoping I can find someone with the ability to get me the owner info so that I may return the boat to them, or get a bill of sale for it before resorting to filling out all the paperwork to do a lien sale to myself as the DMV recommends.

So for now I'm not gonna touch the thing until the paperwork is in hand with my name on it. Unfortunately that's probably going to take well over a month. :/

On the bright side there is a pair of old rental '85 Catalina 22 Capri fin keels for free here without masts, booms or trailers. I'm currently debating it it'd be worth it to go pick one of those up in the meantime, but worry about the cost of finding those parts vs buying one with all of those things.

[Russ]

Wow, what a story.

Very clever idea recording the police scanner. Too bad it didn't work.

You would think the police would help you find the registered owner. After all, there may be an owner who hasn't checked his backyard in years.
Maybe the "sellers" didn't steal it, but still very shady. Another reason why clean title makes a boat worth more. So I guess you don't know any CA cops. I know a few in NJ. I wonder if they can pull records from CA.

Please post back as you learn more. This is fascinating.

[dlandersson]

Docusearch will charge you $39 for a license plate search. You will normally get back a combination of the following information: the first and last name, address, registration and expiration date, make and model of vehicle, VIN number, title number, lien holder name. Most importantly, accurate results are guaranteed.

[morrobaymac]

When I first got to the DMV I had fairly high hopes thinking that the boat was out of their system. The lady at the help desk said just to submit the paperwork without the CF numbers, and as long as it was out of the system they would just issue new numbers as though it were a new / never registered boat.

After doing a little reading I discovered that in California this information is actually public record of sorts. There is a form "INF70"...a records request form that you can submit to the DMV for the info for only $5. They likely didn't tell me about it because it was 5:15 by the time I got the the counter. So tomorrow its off to stand in line some more if I can find the time.

The police deptartment here actually called me back to let me know that the owner of record had actually donated the boat to a charity auction back in '09. Apparently nobody ever registered it. They said they couldn't give me his info either, nor would they call to give the guy my info either, because it would make them an intermediate in the process. I can understand that I suppose. I guess it's nice to know my local cops are so much more helpful than the local DMV at least.


Russ - I'm sure your friends could look it up pretty easy. Just as cops can run a plate from any state on a car...the same system holds all the " undocumented" vessel information. It'd definitely save me some time at the DMV. The CF is "CF 1935 GR". The HIN is MACG3215M78G.