My family has a house in Maine (Central) and we dont really have a great launch for the boats. We have a very steep and rocky ramp that we launched my boat off of last year, but it was an arduous process and isnt something that would be easy to repeat frequently.

My Dad is excited about learning to sail, and thinks its a good thing for my little brother and sister to learn as well. But getting the thing in and out of the water is a beast at our place.

He wants to put a mooring in the lake for my boat and just leave it on there for the season (starting next weekend and prolly through sept).

Will this be a problem? There are other sailboats that are left on the lake all summer. My new boat is in pretty sweet shape.
Thoughts?

Also, as an aside. I dont have a mast float, righting line or righting bag on the boat. Im not planning on pushing it hard at all... but are these requirements?

Cant wait to get in the water!
E

Pushing the boat hard or not...you need to be prepared for a capsize sooner or later. Make sure your mast is mostly air tight and keeping a righting line aboard should be adequate. Make sure you know how to right a capsized catamaran (search on this forum).

With regards to mooring, we usually don't advise mooring a beach catamaran. The problem comes with the rotating mast and all the constant motion that the rigging, mast step, boom, etc. will see while the boat rocks on the water. However, it can be done but I recommend that you plan for a monthly check of the rigging (up high) and the mast step bearings to look for wear.

A barrier coat (something to make the hull water tight) and bottom paint would also be needed since the hulls were probably not intended for full time immersion.

Lastly, you would need to construct some sort of "Y" shapped mooring bridle to attach to each bow so the boat will remain oriented into the wind.

Maybe you could make a floating dock, I think those blue barrels can be found at a coke or pepsi distributor, then just pull the boat up a bunk board and/or carpet.

Also get a righting line, leave it tied on when you flip ( you will flip, it's like a HDD hard drive, it's not if but when)then you throw the line over the hull, you don't want to be in that water very long.

Have fun.

Glad to hear the G Cat is sailing! If you want to leave it "on the water", build or buy a float that you can tie it down to, but that will keep it out of the water.Be sure to tighten the rigging with line so it doesn't blow around as Jake said. The only other option I can think of would be to make a "railway" out of PVC pipes on some sort of wooden frame, that you could slide it over the rocks on. Mooring it for even a season will likely shorten it's life dramatically. I've seen a H14 turn to junk after one summer.

Im glad to hear its sailing too

Im going to try to constuct some kind of pad to pull it up onto. The lake is damn controlled and with the exception of very early/late in the season it is always within a foot or 2 of the same water level. If i can make a ramp that can get it 3+ feet away from the water I bet it will be fine. And ill just keep it in the water when Im there for a few days at a time and pull it out when I leave for the weekend.

Thank you guys very much for your help. This is one of the best forums on the net.

Ill post some pics after I get it sailing this weekend!
Cheers,
E

If floating overnight be SURE to rotate your mast hard over and keep it tied that way- use heavy bungees. If you don't the clanging will get you- flopping for many hours is bad for all the parts, and the shrouds will wear off the anodizing on your shiny new mast. I learned the hard way.

Which G-Cat are you using, the 5.0 MKII, correct?

G-Cat 5.0 MKII in MINT Condition. Wait until you see pictures. It was bought and stored taken apart in a garage for 15 years. Its unreal.

I dont know what to do with the MKI... its in rough shape.

-----"A barrier coat (something to make the hull water tight) and bottom paint would also be needed since the hulls were probably not intended for full time immersion."

-----"Lastly, you would need to construct some sort of "Y" shapped mooring bridle to attach to each bow so the boat will remain oriented into the wind."

I'm faced with a launching problem similar to that of 007Jeep except that I'm only considering mooring for about a week and a half. Does anyone have a recommendation for a barrier coat? You also recommend construction of a y-shaped mooring bridle. Is the general concensus that it would be unwize to simply knot up a y-shaped mooring bridle with rope?
Thanks,
TRowe

Here in the midwest almost everybody who lives on a lake has pound in pier posts for their piers. These would be ideal for you ramp. You simply make the pier/ramp as wide as you like with the pound in posts (later you will cut them so they are below the siderails and stringers), make it long enough to get you past the rocks(you can even slope the ramp to below water level with the pound in post system), then cover it with plywood or OSB (be sure to add enough stringers to give it some strength down the middle)l. Then cover the whole shebang (at least where the hulls will touch) with indoor/outdoor carpet. When you are ready to launch simply throw a couple of buckets of water to "grease" the ramp. Best of all you can lauch or retrieve your boat by using a simple boat trailer winch (you run it from below to lauch...above the water to retrieve---for me it is pretty easy to push the boat into the water...and it is really nice to be able to quickly pull the boat out of the water and above the waves). Wondering what to do with the pound posts at the end of the season? Go to a junkyard and get a truck style 3 legged jack. Attach a lenght of chain to one post at a time....jack up to apply pressure...then tap the pipe with a maul to help free it. Once it starts to move you can just jack it out of the ground/water.

Best of all, if you label the pipes you can use them again next year in the same location they came from (instead of pounding on the top of the now cut off posts....you put a wooden block on top and pound it in by hitting the block...not the much softer pipe head.

Hope this idea helps!

Paul
Milwaukee, WI

For a week and a half I wouldn't worry about a barrier coat.

A line with a overhand knot loop in the middle works fine. The tails of the Y should be as long or a little longer than the your bridle wire lenght. Obvious exclusions to that last bit would be bridles like on a H17.

Well the weekend went great.

I got the boat in the water and left it on the mooring for 4 days with a bridle attached to keep it pointed to the wind. It was a pain having to get a ride out there everytime i wanted to sail with the sails but it all ended up good.

I bought some silicone sealant and some other stuff for the mast, and before I went out I checked to see if it was sealed. I saw sealant around all the holes and we shook it to see if there was any water in there (it had been sitting on the ground all winter (Im not sure who moved it)) but it was bone dry and the sealant I had took 10 days to set. So we threw her on.

Note to the real n00bs here: Dont try to mast with the boat on a trailer. WOW its a lot harder. Anyways we got that to work.

So I went out and had everything flowing well. I was out solo since no one else in my family really knows how to sail at all, and I wanted to figure out the baot. I had a great time. The thing is really hard to tack but I think Im getting the hang of it. I learned a lot from the 2002 Hobie U book that I found online.

So the wind was light <5 so I dinked around then It died. I couldnt decided whether or not I should go in so my parents came over (on the pontoon) and aksed me what I was going to do. I told them I might as well stay out but to give me a walkie talkie so I could call them if the wind never came back up or I got in trouble.

Good thing I did!

They stayed out for a while but eventually went back in. I stayed out and the wind started to pick up to probably around 12knots. So I finally got a chance to get the boat up and hauling!

Its so sweet! Wow Its so much fun! Flying a hull is one of the coolest thigns ever.

One thing that I didnt anticipate was that there is not a linear progression of lift on the hull as it pulls out of the water.

As I took the hull out, what I think happened was the wind grabbed the front and back tramps and just lifted the whole boat right up and over without any real warning (at least as I can tell in hindsight). As soon as the boat whent over, the mast started sinking like a rock and within 10 seconds I was underneath the turtled boat. I kept my cool and untangled myslef and swam out to the other side of the boat.

In the process of flipping Id managed to get the walkie talkie out and say "Help help come get me come get me" before Id gone totally underwater (and ruined the walkie talkie).

Id tried to install a righting line, but Didnt know how to do it, but tried a very ghetto rig anyways. What I ended up doing was grabbing the jib line and using that to pull from since one end of it was tied to the hull.

So they came over. Luckly I had left the main halyard tucked into the tramp so I just pulled that out and got on the pontoon boat and pulled the boat up to sidways. Then my dad just walked up the mast as I pulled on the jib line, and It came right back upright no problem.

I sailed it a few more times. It was very very sweet. I didnt flip it again. I have a q im going to ask in a different threat.

Overall Im very suprised by how fast it flipped and by how easy it was to get upright again. I need to figure out the righting line thing, for sure.

Im very glad I kept my cool and didnt freak out and drown or anything.

Comments? Thoughts?