Dolphin striker adjustment

Hi everyone,

I'm a hobie 17 sailor and I just bought a second hand hobie 16 in good shape to be able to sail even in high wind.

But I have an important question, because I see taht it was really easy do adjust the dolphin striker but i don't know how I am suppose to adjust it.
I think that's it about hulls line up, but I dont really know much.

Can someone explain me how I'am suppose to adjust it

Thanks !

Full disclosure: I have not done this myself.

The advice is to tighten until the support bar (wire?) that goes across under the crossbar “thrums” when you hit it. If it “klunks” it’s too loose. I would to a single turn of the nut at a time and I expect there’s some wiggle room in how tight you need to go, but in concept, if you consider the purpose is to support the load, tight enough to support the load on the crossbar would be “thrum” tight.

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H16 2002 "Islands" Sail No. 107432

On the Hobie 18, we would tighten the dolphin striker until the front cross bar straightened by 1/8th".
In other words, from 'at rest' to 'tightened', the front cross bar moved by 1/8th of an inch.

Hope this is helpful.

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2015 H16, with spin,
SOLD 1989 Hobie SX18 Sail # 1947 "In Theory..."
'Only two things are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity. But I'm not sure about the former.'

Thanks Dookie for your suggestion, but I'm not english, and I don't get the difference betwen ''thrums'' and ''klunk'', it might refer to the sound of the bar.
I try to turn the nut a bit in the two ways, but I always get the same sound.

Thanks John, but i don't know the current status of the dolphin stiker. I'll try a few board and sse how the boat is feeling.

And it seems like I can screw the nut a lot as i can unscrew it fully

Thanks for your advice, and I'm not sure there is big issues of having a dolphin striker to tight or too loose.

I would just pre-load the dolphin striker rod. That rod is like a truss on a bridge. It keeps the forward arced crossbar
from trying to straightened out from the weight of the mast, sails, and rigging wires pulling everything down when the
rigging is drawn tight.
So, what I do is, with the boat at rest, with no mast on it, back out both nuts. Make sure the striker rod is centered
at the dolphin striker post. Now hand tighten both nuts until they just touch the pylon castings. From there I would use
a wrench and go one revolution on each nut and call that good. That will take the slop out of the rod and put a small
pre-load on the crossbar. So when you start putting the mast and everything else on the front crossbar, it will not
move down from the added weight.
What you do NOT want to do is really turn the nuts a lot of revolutions. This will arc the front crossbar up more than it
was designed to be. It will also bring the hulls, at the front, closer together which will ruin the alignment of the hulls
because they will not be parallel to each other anymore.
Good luck.

Greg 1984 H16

Make sure you check the DS tension after the trampoline has been tensioned. After the tramp is tightened, the corner castings will compress in tight to the crossbar and you may notice that the DS is looser than it was before the tramp was tightened. Otherwise, tightening the DS is mainly done by feel (I have no idea why Hobie never published a torque spec for the adjusting nuts). Basically, the striker should not rattle or move freely when properly tightened. Bring the nutsin snug to the corner castings and then go one or two turns beyond that and you will feel the rod get good and tight. That’s all it needs. You may also need to clamp a pair of vice grips to the rod to keep it from turning when you tighten the nuts.

sm

SRM: I agree with you a torque spec on this one would go a long way to avoid confusion but I suppose this is a result of the H16’s “beach cat” roots vs a carbon-fiber race cat.

That and lord knows how much corrosion can build up on those nuts making any torque spec applicable to only brand new boats from the factory... so “tight enough but not too tight” is as best we can do.

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H16 2002 "Islands" Sail No. 107432

Thanks for all your advices, I'll do it with my feeling !

I hade an other questions, because I want to renovate my hulls so I'll photoshop the hulls color to get an idea of how he'll look with the sails ?
But I don't have good pictures of the boat.
So I search a photo on google and i find this pdf but not my sails on it...
https://media.hobie.com/web_uploads/201 ... Guide2.pdf

How do I upload a picture ? So that you can maybe help me find my sails ?

thanks !

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Jerome Vaughan
Hobie 16