Bought a lovely 85' and have taken it out sailing, works GREAT and is a BLAST! However since its an older boat i have a few questions about potentially "old, about to break critical components" as this would be what i want to prevent so that i can continue enjoying this beautiful cat! I appreciate everyone that takes the time to answer, thank you all!
- Tiller Tube, after purchasing, and driving the cat back 3 hours to my house, after inspecting my new purchase further i noticed that (of course i would notice it AFTER i bought it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) just one of my tiller tubes was bent slightly downwards... not severely, but deff. bent, it seems to still have some great strength, but i question how much longer it has before it breaks, a side note, it also looks like someone tried to weld the aluminum back together (and did a very remarkable job, because welding aluminum to this degree definitely required a near master welder) so i ordered a have a new tiller tube, however despite being the same size and the same diameter there is only pre drilled holes on one end of the tube. so i guess my bottom question here is, sail it like i stole it and wait for the faulty tube to break? Or remove rivets for the old tube and use the new one and drill a hold and re-rivet with hobbies stainless rivets?
- Hulls ,White hulls, no serious damage or scratches in the fiber glass, but it does look like there was one small (maybe 4"x4"ish) repair that was made on middle of the outside of the hull. It seems like a good, watertight job, but its not color matched and looks ugly, could anyone recommend a potential remedy of sanding/painting/polishing or anything else to help me get rid of that blemish? And also on that note, dose anyone have any advice of how i should go about removing the marine oxidation from the hulls (as i imagine they havent seen and love in 10 to 15 years) and polishing/applying a marine anti-oxidization compound? and in which steps would be enormously helpful. Last comment on the hulls, recently i went out for probably the 2nd time in a month and the most recent time i felt that there was water in one hull as i was moving this, it was not a a-lot of water, but more just concerning that theres a small leak (the drain seals appear to be pretty water tight)
-Mast stepping While i am in my early twenties and have plenty enough strength to step the mast (and have have even done it solo once) i find that it is the most labor intensive part of the set up process, and i was wondering if anyone else has had any success in attaching (or welding) a winch to the front of the trailer right under where the mast is placed and secured when in transit, then just use a piece of wood to attach my winch cable to the mast's main stay and just crank it up slowly. it would really make think much easier if i could make this into a possibility
Thank you all for even taking the time to read all of this, this is my first post on the hobie forums and i hope that i can continue to sail on this beautiful boat for may years to come, thats why im trying to do my best to maintain it! Once again thank you all, I really would love to hear what anyone has to say. Thank you
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