Trimaran - Especially Searunner - Owners

[Mark Johnson]

Roy & Ross,

I pity you guys doing the "yard dance". Yesterday and this morning, Mariam & I did a thorough top to bottom wash on Delphys. The cabin and deck were not so bad, (with a small power washer's help), but scrubbing the hulls, underwings, and inside the vent hole from a dinghy, is hard work!

Being in fresh to brackish water, we get green mildew on the North side of the deck, and these nasty little spiders all over the boat and rig. They not only make webs galore, but love underneath those deck extensions and the like, for stashing their egg cases. All over the hulls was spiderpoop specs. It takes soaking in Simple Green and hard scrubbing to get them off. These are such busy structures to maintain!

Just spring washing has me sore & tired. I bet you guys are beyond sore by now.

Hang in there...
Mark

[rossad]

Thankgoodness my 37 is back in the water. Just 4 weeks I got stuck in. no breaks or days off. Being as methodical I could be doing things in the right order and with the best preparation. Before each day I did a lot of thinking planning the day... That was through the night. Cannot believe how well it went. That was my 4th haulout. I nearly paid for other help but decided not because my thinking was l couldnt get prepared well enough for that. The rubbing down was hard but you got to be exact thinking all the time and dont go too far that can do more damage. Wet and dry is the paper to use with holder and handle. Fitted a new maxwell windless which will allow me to use the boat into old age.
Cheers Mark. Great that you are sharing thorough ly your thoughts on these boats. There is a way to search and compile all your valuable threads on this site. They can be saved as one file and collated.

[Roy M]

I'm a tired puppy, but I'm happy that tomorrow is launch day. I got all the bottom primer and the new zinc paint applied, two coats overall and three at the waterline. It's nice stuff to use. It's a very shiny black, dries hard pretty quickly, and spreads nicely. The reps from the paint company were there to watch the process and give advice. Tomorrow, while the boat is in the slings, I'll sand the areas where the blocking was, prime it and then put a couple coats of paint to complete the job. I painted the prop and shaft with PropSpeed, using some tricks the boatyard showed me with this stuff. If it hold up better than the last time, I'll share the tricks. Then, it's back home to the slip and a well-earned rest for the weekend.

[dale d]

I'm still in the yard. Mast is painted and today I hung most of the rope on it.
Going nice and slow. Just now getting back into the mental attitude it takes to do good work and lots of it. I'm working on the good work part, hoping the lot's of it will follow.
There are three SEARUNNERS in the row I'm in here in the Marina Seca in San Carlos. Tie Fighter a 37 - Molly Brown a 37 - and Corazon my new to me 34.

[Mark Johnson]

Originally Posted by rossad

Thankgoodness my 37 is back in the water. Just 4 weeks I got stuck in. no breaks or days off. Being as methodical I could be doing things in the right order and with the best preparation. Before each day I did a lot of thinking planning the day... That was through the night. Cannot believe how well it went. That was my 4th haulout. I nearly paid for other help but decided not because my thinking was l couldnt get prepared well enough for that. The rubbing down was hard but you got to be exact thinking all the time and dont go too far that can do more damage. Wet and dry is the paper to use with holder and handle. Fitted a new maxwell windless which will allow me to use the boat into old age.
Cheers Mark. Great that you are sharing thorough ly your thoughts on these boats. There is a way to search and compile all your valuable threads on this site. They can be saved as one file and collated.

CONGRATULATIONS ROSS!
You've done it again! One of the few times I envy my monohull friends, is when searching for and then enduring the dreaded boatyard... You and Roy are both faster than me, although this last time, my painting of the netting with vinyl dip, and then AwlGripping of the underwings & vent hole ceiling, took up more than half of the time in the yard. (10 weeks)

NOW... Roy and Dale D need to get out of there too!


MY CF POSTS:
Thanks for the kind words about my CF posted information, Ross. Truthfully, I had been strongly encouraged NOT to "give it away" on CF, but to write a book on the subject of: "Outfitting and Maintaining our Custom Multihulls". The thing is, I know from my past experience, that writing a book is a LOT of work... like 70 hrs/wk for a year or more! This much sitting at a desk is really hard on my broken up body.

Also, just like with my CD on "Cruising the Caribbean", the "writer" often gets half or less of the proceeds from each sale, so unless he sells thousands of books, (rather than a couple of hundred), he never even reaches the brake even point. WE BUILDERS & CUSTOM BUILT TRIMARINERS, ARE A RARE BREED OUT THERE... So, I have been passing on what knowledge & experience that I think will help, when ever a particular subject comes up. I hope it has been of use, and my apologies if anyone ever took offense at my comments. No offense was intended.

MY CF POSTS MADE AVAILABLE???
I thought of that! I have culled the "chatty posts", and made a "Word Document" of the good ones, by cut & pasting them into it. I have copied about 10% so far, out of of ALL of my posts, and the "document" is now up to about 300 pages! If I continue, and copy ALL of the pertinent ones, it would be well over 1,000 pages of illustrated information.

There is perhaps 10% repetition in there, as the same subject often comes up over and over again. Still, each post on that subject will vary in places.

This information would ONLY be useful as a resource, with a thorough index, like...
HULL MATERIALS: pages 27,68, 90
RIGS: pages 126, 562, 780
GLASSING METHODS: pages 400, 788,
Then... PAINT, HARDWARE, VENTILATION, SAILS, Etc.

IF I ever put it all together, my writing could be available to others as an E book, or be made available as a Zip Drive. We'll see. It is VERY time consuming.


THE BEST "OLD" RESOURCE OF ALL:
I learned a lot about multihull history, construction, and design, as well as the "lore" (as Jim calls it), from reading his and hundreds of other related books, HOWEVER...

The very best and most all encompassing depiction of what the "movement" was really like, was MULTIHULLS MAGAZINE. All except for the last few years when they "went yuppie", I have the entire collection from volume #1 in the early 70s. Most of the older ones look like my copy of "The Construction Manual"... brown, dog eared, and falling apart. I bet I had read each one of them from cover to cover, over 20 times!

They had articles from ALL of the designers, (Many by Jim B), who freely discussed their work and their ideas. For the most part: Every capsize, professional insult from monohullers, storm survived, ports bashed in, dismasting, grounding disaster, attack by whales, fire, successful crossing, perfect anchorage, or race won, was discussed exhaustively. Pretty much NOTHING in the "movement" happened, that did not end up reported here. It's readership and the articles within, were world wide.

They were a poor ol rag, and would publish articles from ANY crsuiser or builder who sent one in, to give their experiences as well. My first article in Multihulls about the building and launching of my Wharram 23, was hand written on a torn off piece of a brown paper bag!

We really knew what each design was like... in different climates, for different kinds of cruising, how hard they were to build, how fast, etc... BEFORE we started our projects. This was all with thousands of photos and design illustrations as well!

HOW YOU CAN GET THIS INFORMATION:
If anyone REALLY wants to study the subject... you need the complete collection, at least up to the year 2000. NO ONE threw these away! I still have my collection, but it is NOT for sale, (much to my wife's chagrin). Others, however, may want to sell theirs??? I used to see them for sale on occasion. I bet ROY has them in storage somewhere???

When the 25th anniversary issue came out, those of us who had been on-board the entire time, were listed inside the front cover. We all got the next year for free!

There were not a lot of us, but perhaps 100 or so. THESE COMPLETE COLLECTIONS ARE STILL OUT THERE! If you put feelers out, you may find someone "old in the tooth", that is ready to give up their classic old magazines.
Back then, we were the outcast of the cruising world, and getting any respect at all took decades. It truly was a "movement", not just another type of boat.

For those interested enough, give it a shot.

Later,
Mark

[rossad]

WOW!!!!!!

[Roy M]

Sorry, Mark, I ran out of storage space a long time ago, so mine went to other places. As far as being a writer, for money, I think that it is highly over rated, as you have pointed out. Too much work, for too little money, such a tiny market for what we personally value as pearls. Best, I think, that these treasures of personal experience, challenges, small victories and, too often, painful lessons, have found their way into a publication seen by many around the world, for free. Cruisers Forum has been, for me, a unique and valuable tool for accessing information I trust and enjoy. Thanks to the moderators and other folks that have crafted this forum! Where else, do you suppose, one could find over 2000 interesting and informative commentaries on a subject as esoteric as a 1960's home built boat?

[Cavalier MK2]

If you can ever get into the archives of the old Scott Brown Multihulls foums from the UK there is great stuff.

For SR people learning about their rigs it might be good to look at why some have suggested the mast needs to be moved for a spreaderless rig. Conventional design has the mast line up with the front beam to take the load from the outboard side stay. In early multihull racing boats like Brittany Ferries and Rogue Wave used a 3 beam/aka layout so the center beam took the mast loads. In the interests of saving weight the middle beam was dropped but what to do if the front beam was too far forward for the desired mast location? Racers started using a bridle from the front to aft beam letting them distribute the sidestay/mast loads to both beams. Outboard stays lower the mast compression but increase the beam loads, having 2 doing the job spreads the load.

One of the neat things about the SR is the cutter rig with its mast in the cockpit. This location could still be used with the stays led outboard to a bridle connected to the front and aft main strength beams, The wing deck and underwing then help with the diagonal component of the load while both beams take the rig load. So never say never when looking at rigs and layouts but take the time to understand the structure and do the engineering for safe sailing. Wood boats are especially easy to modify for different requirements but you can't just bolt things on without making sure the structure is working for you. The downside of this configuration is usually less overlap available for the headsails.

[Mark Johnson]

Originally Posted by Roy M

Sorry, Mark, I ran out of storage space a long time ago, so mine went to other places. As far as being a writer, for money, I think that it is highly over rated, as you have pointed out. Too much work, for too little money, such a tiny market for what we personally value as pearls. Best, I think, that these treasures of personal experience, challenges, small victories and, too often, painful lessons, have found their way into a publication seen by many around the world, for free. Cruisers Forum has been, for me, a unique and valuable tool for accessing information I trust and enjoy. Thanks to the moderators and other folks that have crafted this forum! Where else, do you suppose, one could find over 2000 interesting and informative commentaries on a subject as esoteric as a 1960's home built boat?

All very good points Roy.
I have been "published" a number of times over the years, in various places, but I never made over a dollar or two per hour invested. One doesn't do it for the money. One does, however, still have to make a bit of a living somehow. Even when living dirt cheep on the hook, I had to have some money.

The writers that do make a living at it... Fatty Goodlander, Tom Neil, and even Jim Brown to a degree, find a perfect mix of not only telling a story, but doing it in a way that makes us laugh. Even they never got rich at it.

One has to write a book that is INCREDIBLY useful to a VERY broad audience to make a real income at it... I'm talking about something like Nigel Caulder's Boat Maintenance Bible. It sold many many thousands of copies.
I asked him once how he "learned" all of that stuff, and he said that "he didn't". He researched and "compiled" every bit of it.

I don't have that "naturally humorous" writing style that magazines love, NOR the patience to "compile" a huge book like Caulder's. I only write about what I have "previously" studied or learned from my own experience over the last 40+ years, because strangely, I remember almost all of it! I can't remember much of anything else these days, but I remember this stuff. None of it is recently researched or compiled, and I never tried to be funny... successfully, so I have done a lot of writing here on CF, for the "sole" purpose of helping my fellow trimariners.

My theoretical "financial" success as a writer, is unfortunately limited by the fact that this stuff that I know is "only" interesting and useful, to US. The reality is... We are a very very small segment of the cruising fraternity.

SO... I'm trying to "be" for others, the guy that I WISH I had known 40 years ago, so that hopefully, their road will be less rocky than mine has been. My trial & error period, had some pretty colossal errors in it!
Here, I have no ego involvement, no hidden agenda, & no visions of big profit...

IF I make some of my CD/Cruising DVD, or writing stuff available to others in the future, it will cost them little more than enough to cover my expenses.
As I have said many times: "I am only trying to help".

I always enjoy your posts Roy, as you have "been there done that", so many times over, that we should all pay attention to what you have to say. You are a remarkably talented guy! I know that you already know most of what I pass on here already, as do a few other trimaran old timers. The same is true for me when I read other folks posts. What I do, is look for the occasional kernels that I didn't yet know, and try to continue learning from them. I gloss over the 95% I already knew, and for the most part, I keep it to myself when I disagree with other's minor points.

I think this would be the best tack for ALL of us here. The rest of CF is way too full of people "disagreeing", just for the sake of it, rather than having respectful & civil discussions. I for one would like to see this thread get back on track that way... No trolls allowed!

Your posts, Roy, have always represented this ideal. They are well written, useful, "correct" 99% of the time, and always respectful of others. I always enjoy them.

BTW... Did you splash today?
Mark

[happyendings]

Mark, I certainly agree that specialized publishing isn't a likely source of great income but would like to add something that a tax accountant told me some time ago. Publishing falls into the same general area as research and development in the manufacturing sector, that is to say it is prospective in nature and thus does not fail the "intent to make a profit" test that other sailing-related businesses often do. Thus, many research-related expenses are deductible as long as a book or article that is intended to be sold is the result of the business activity even if the material is not a commercial success. Of course, this only applies to the extent that one has a tax obligation to pay but at least it is something. I suspect many cruising guides are born out of this theory.

[dale d]

On the subject of information.....

I'm in a boat yard ( San Carlos Marina Seca) with another SeaRunner. It's a 37 named Molly Brown. She has a new owner. The seller suggested they replace the control lines on the centreboard. I offered to ask the list just what is entailed with changing the control lines and can it be done on the hard?

[Mark Johnson]

Happyendings,
Thanks for the idea! I was aware of that... In my vocation/avocation I have spent so much time working on my own boat "lately", to the neglect of paying customer's boats, that I have on occasion operated at a loss for the year. My income from the CD is very small. The only "point" during those lean years, (besides accomplishing the upkeep on Delphys), is that I could "write off" the tools I had bought that year. I am slowly, piece by piece, trying to replace my tool collection, since the big $30,000 loss from Hurricane Ivan in '04.

One has to be careful with their taxes and the IRS. You can operate at a "legitimate" loss, 2 years out of 5 only. If it goes to 3 out of 5, it invites an audit! At least, so says my tax guy...

I have lived a VERY frugal life, and making money was always just a unpleasant necessity. Truth be told, of the last 45 semi adult years, 1/3rd of them was spent building "myself" a boat, 1/3rd of them were spent actively out cruising on them, and 1/3rd of them were spent building boats or working on them for a living. I never got enough cruising in, but to have gotten there at all while gainfully employed just 1/3rd of the time, is pretty good, for the NOT rich or famous! Of coarse, now that SS time is just around the corner for us, I have to pay the price. They go by past income, and half of my "career" was without pay...

We hope to have another good round or two of cruising in our semi retired future, and my writing, CDs, or other information products that I can get out there, just might be a small supplement to our living on a "cruiser's budget", with of our meager SS.




Dale,
In answer to your question... I'm not sure, on your friend's SR 37?

If it was "your" boat, no problem, IF you can get to that large pad eye on the fwd upper part of the CB. (It will be very close to the fwd CB trunk wall). We can reach ours well enough. Also, on Delphys, we dug a grave sized 4' deep hole under the keel for fully lowered CB test, before launching. They "might" let a person do that in the yard? I also just blocked her up hi enough once, but it really scared me when this 60 mph thunderstorm hit.
Once the lines are attached to the pad eye, routing them through the blocks is no problem at all, if you attach a small messenger line to the old control lines first, to pull the new ones through.. Only the "down" line is tricky.

When I worked and cruised on the first SR 37, we had one control line end up in the aft cabin, and one end up in the front cabin, (routed through holes in the trunk's end walls).
Other "later" 37s may be different.

The 37 I was most familiar with, was set up very differently from the SR 34, which has it's lines end up on a low mast winch. I worked all over that 37 for many months, (they had pounded one under wing right OUT), but I never had an occasion to open up the CB trunk.

John sent me this sheet of our 34s, for whatever that's worth...

HOW ABOUT IT ROSS? CAN HE DO IT IN THE YARD?


Btw... I did a Google "satellite" of your boatyard, San Carlos Marina, and WOW! Nice looking place. Really developed and all the comforts. Couldn't see the three SRs in a row, but it was surely an old photo.

Hang in there,
Mark

[dale d]

After posting I looked at my board. It would be easy to replace the lines on the 34. I'm glad I was able to score a 34. The 37 just seems like so much more boat and I'm not the waterman I used to be. So no way to drop the board out the bottom right. On the 34 it looks pretty straight forward to pull it thru the cockpit. I'll report back tomorrow.

The yard is really nice for a boat yard. Clean showers, $14 a day lay days, $13 dollar in and out and they have really tight security so you don't have to hassel with picking up every night. They say it has the largest fleet of sailboats on the hard in the western world. 600 or so. at a few hundred a month that's really good money. I could get used to this if they threw in a little more sailing and less working <grin>

All the multis have their own trailers so they are cheaper to store and way less hassel to launch.

But when it is all said and done. It's a boat yard.

thanks Mark talk to u tomorrow with more info

[Roy M]

????? What's the fuss about the control LINE (not plural). The board floats, so it doesn't need an UP line. I just have a u-bolt mounted in the aft section of the centerboard trunk, with a block, to run the DOWN control line from the top aft hole in the trunk, thru the block and up to an available mast halyard winch to pull the board down to the position desired. In that same control line, between the block and the centerboard, is an eye. In that eye I put two pieces of 500# test parachute cord, then pass both of them through the u-bolt that holds the block. They don't need any blocks because one of them fits into a clam cleat when the desire position is reached, the other is in reserve as a spare if the "fuse" line breaks from hitting the bottom. It's easy enough to attach additional fuse lines to the control line eye from time to time. When I want to raise the board, I simply pull the fuse line out of the clam cleat and up the board pops.

I just looked at the drawing again, and see that I eliminated a block at the base of the forward end of the mast step, and led the control line in a direct line from the u-bolt and block to the halyard mast winches. They are very powerful, and remove a 90 degree turn from the friction losses using a mast step turning block. My centerboard trunk has two pieces, a short one aft to allow the control line to exit in a straight line to the mast, the other, just aft of the mast, only gets lifted if I need to inspect something. I also crammed a short piece of a swimming pool "noodle", 3 1/2" diameter, into the trunk to form a shelf to hold the 1/2" dacron control line when it is not in use. I can pull the noodle out easily if I need to get to the block, or if it gets pushed down far enough to mess with the exit angle to the mast winch.

[Roy M]

dale d, I might just have to include a stopover at San Carlos as an alternative to local means of haulouts in my future. Although, I was told when I launched, yesterday, that when I need to reinstall the new centerboard, I can come over before lunch sometime, they will fit me into the lifting straps and raise me slightly out of the water beyond the axle gland, and I can drop the new board in with the halyard, and install the axle while they eat lunch. All for a six-pack. I left the old one laying on the ground for the fork lift to pick up and trash.