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Further this, I'm talking to a couple C&C design dept alumni about how much weight you have to toss in a 27 to make it float an inch deeper.. I'm informed by email: "The number you are looking for is "Lbs per inch immersion". This is the area of the water plane in sq.ft times .083' (1") times the density of water (62.4 Lb'cu.ft for FW). This is a standard item on the design data sheet for each boat, but unfortunately, I don't have any of those (I used to, but they have gone missing!)" This particular designer's pure guess is that for the 27 it would be 500 pounds for every inch, but I'll see if I can learn more. In particular, it would be great to have the design data sheet. I may be in the collection of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
C&C's design department drawings of the two hull versions of the 27 give the draft of the Mark 1 27 as 4 ft 3 in. and the Mk II (which in class association terms covers the Mk 3 and 4 versions) as 4 ft 5.5. inches. This is based on the "load waterline length." The drawings also indicate that the average flotation for the 27 is an inch and a half deeper than the draft based on LWL. The actual real-world draft as Dave notes depends on how much junk (I mean, irreplaceable gear) you have on board, although it would take an awful lot of stuff to immerse a boat of this size another inch or two.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
The seals on the main windows on my Mk 1 are shot. I have two questions here:
1. Is South Shore Yachts still the source for the replacement seals?
2. Has anyone ever attempted to replace these fixed windows with an opening port assembly of some kind?
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Any boat with a curvy sheer has this problem of a low spot somewhere aft of midships. I seem to recall some clever person draping a small towel over a lifeline with one end in the puddling area. The cloth acted as a wick and sopped up the water as it gathered.
My Mk 1 has this exciting pooling feature. I've never done anything about it.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Hi all: further to David's note on my drawing, it was traced from a 1974 design office drawing, a copy of which was provided by the marine museum. But getting the lines fair was a nasty bit of work and I was fortunate to have Steve Killing (whose initials were on the drawing) go over it with me. Steve also confirmed for me that there are indeed differences in the hull forms, more than just stretching out the stern, for example, as there was an effort to "bump" the hull to improve its IOR rating. I showed the drawing to George Cuthbertson recently and he surprised me by saying he knew nothing about the differences between the two hull shapes but thanked me for showing it to him.
I produced the drawing so that my father could make a 1/12 scale model of Diva for me, which hangs above my fireplace. The lines are as true as one can hope, but I caution that I would never rely on the waterline (horizontal plane) curves of the Mark 1 keel for fairing purposes.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Chris: the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston is the repository for all of the design office materials pertaining to C&C's history from its start into the 1980s. The materials weirdly are not listed online under research finding aids, but there's a considerable collection of blueprints.
http://www.marmuseum.ca
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
If you're already going to replace both batteries, I think it makes sense to buy a cold-cranking starter battery. Cheaper than a good deep cycle, and it's designed to get an engine to turn over with a big blast of amps. The question then is whether you can get by with one deep cycle as your "house."
I replaced the starter this year in Diva and the single deep-cycle house is also up for replacement. In the meantime, I added a third battery bank, two 6-volt deep-cycle Trojans installed in series and dedicated exclusively to the cold-plate refrigeration system. I reasoned that I never want my refrigeration to kill my house battery and take my instruments with it.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Disconnect one battery completely, put the selector switch on 1, and see if the cabin lights or some other device come on. If they don't, the battery you disconnected is 1.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
That's a pretty darned big question, Stephen. <img src="emoticons/icon_smile.gif"> Are you talking both the starter and the house battery? Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Interesting issue. I work as a foreman's assistant for launch and haul at our sailing club, and in the spring I was given the task of double-checking the weights given by owners on their forms and what the crane operator was actually detecting. We have a Mark V in the club and I recall him putting something around 4000 pounds on the form. If my memory isn't failing me, I think the crane operator said the lift weight was actually well in excess of 6000 pounds. I don't know how much of that was attributable to gear on board. But if you're trying to figure out towing capability, it would be best to err on the side of caution. Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
I recall Pres. Clinton ordering that the built-in civilian degradation of position accuracy be removed, so it shouldn't be an issue any more. But that hasn't helped my iPhone 4. The position is fine for driving a car or finding a Tim Hortons, but I don't trust it for shoal waters in Georgian Bay. That said, my new dock neighbor at the sailing club uses the Navionics program in the iPhone, but I'm not sure they gunkhole quite like I do.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Thanks Richard. My plan is to install one inside the cabin, behind the bridge deck, so I'm not terribly worried about weather.
Interested to hear about your Navionics experience. I'm still not totally comfortable with position accuracy in the iPhone, at least where I live. When I use an app like Find my iPhone, my position at the house doesn't look much better than 50 feet. Sometimes it shows me on the property when I'm indoors. Where I boat on Georgian bay, a 50 foot PO can get you in a whole heap of trouble. I'm still relying on my plotter with a WAAS aerial and I think my PO is ten feet or less.
That said, people might be interested in a free app that uses official cdn topographic maps. It's called Topographic Maps Canada. You download the maps you need for coverage from within the app. I find it handy for when I'm ashore hiking and it provides additional info about landmarks etc.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Hi Russ: small world. My sister lives in Comox and has a medical practice in Courtney.
If I did everything all over again, I would still reach for the cellphone first in that situation. We were close to a dock, had no need of assistance from another vessel, and only wanted to get an ambulance to meet us there ASAP. (I also needed to be in constant contact by cell with the dispatcher because we had to figure out how to guide the ambulance into a gated residential development whose roads weren't on the map. After docking I had to dash into the neighborhood, described the road via cellphone and watch for and confirm the ambulance had found me.) As it happened, our other option for the sail that day was to hang a left and go towards Georgian Bay Islands National Park. Had we made that choice and my dad then got into trouble, I would have reached for the VHF. There's a Coast Guard IRB station at Brebeuf Island and I would have needed assistance from them or someone with a powerboat to speed him to shore.
cheers
Doug
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Once the draft starts moving aft in those old sails it's all over but the heeling. My 150 genoa will be the next to go. It's vintage and I'm hoping to hold out for another season.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Richard: two other points. I strictly cruise my Mk 1 27 and if you;re using a 1970s vintage main you'll notice a phenomenal difference in performance with a good new main as the breeze comes up. I no longer reef as early as I used to, and my wife noticed the performance difference right away. With the old Raudaschl I ran out of strings to pull and used to have to reef when the breeze got much past 15 apparent going to windward. Now I just let the full main drive the boat and reduce the furling genoa through 18-20 apparent.
Second, Sobstad sells a lot of sails up here in Midland. Richard is known mainly as a racing guy, but service is first-rate and he worked hard to get my business.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Richard Osborn at Sobstad in Barrie made me two sails this year. (Actually, they were made at the Cleveland loft.) A loose-footed dacron main with two reef points and a single full batten, and a gennaker. I've been very happy with both, in construction, cut, and quality of hardware. I'm not totally sold on the single full batten. Richard thinks I may need a stiffer one. A problem I've had with it is that when reaching in a breeze the compression in the batten pushes the bolt rope sideways at the slider and creates flutter along a foot or two of the bolt rope below, which requires a lot of halyard tensioning to deal with. I'll muck with this next season.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
I may be stating the obvious for some people here, but I had a medical emergency on Diva in August. My father (about to turn 82) suddenly didn't feel so hot and collapsed in my cockpit on an afternoon sail out of Midland on southern Georgian Bay. We were a couple hundred yards off Port McNicoll at the time. (He wanted to see the vintage ship SS Keewatin.) I have a digital VHF wired to my gps plotter which will give lat/lon with an emergency call. All very nice to have, but instead I just hit 911 on my iPhone4 and summoned the ambulance. The dispatcher told me she could see exactly where I was on her electronic map as I motored for a dock in a private development.
Dad is okay—he's still got more tests on his ticker—but I learned a couple things. One is that if you have a RAM mike at the helm and don't bother to connect it before leaving the dock, it's not very useful for making an emergency call, and leaving the helm to rummage around inside the cabin to grab the mike on the VHF when you have a passenger in distress wouldn't be ideal. The second of course is that if I have cellphone coverage, I'm just reaching for the 3G phone and summoning help that way.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
I've been meaning to add a 12V socket for so long that I've reached the point that the devices I do want to power (cellphones above all) are now plugging into my car via USB. I have seen USB adaptors for 12V sockets but I'm wondering if anyone has knowledge of/direct experience with a direct USB connector to the 12V system.
Also, tomorrow is haul out, in case you're wondering about the sobbing noise emanating from the northern horizon.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Please be advised that as the owner of a 27 turning 40 this season (the boat, not me, I'll be 53) and as a former working marine journo hack type, I have been lassoed into serving on the legacy panel. Any 27ers that attend, please do say hello.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
IN a related note, a previous owner of my Mk 1 had the genius idea of cutting an inspection port into the water tank in the V-berth. It has made cleaning (and winterizing) a dream. Believe me, if you could actually see inside your water tank, you'd want to be able to go at it with a scrub brush and not just add cleaners and chemicals and hope for the best. I'm still cautious enough to only use the tank water for doing dishes etc. I carry drinking water separately when cruising. I just don't trust all the hoses and fittings, not to mention the tank itself.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
A few years ago when I was racing a Shark, I named the vessel Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. On club race night, sailing past the RC boat before the start and having to formally announce the vessel got a little wearying, and it was just shortened to Controls. I never did get it painted on the hull. The alternative was Fruit Salad Bazooka. When I bought Diva the name was registered and that took all the fun out of life.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
I seem to be in full maritime disaster mode this week. My op-ed piece on the sinking of the school tall ship Concordia and the investigation complications caused by its Barbadian "flag of convenience" ran on Tuesday in the National Post. You can read it online here. http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2629596&p=1
I consider it a happy coincidence that the day after my piece ran, Transport Canada said it would be launching its own investigation.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
A big concern with chart plotters going forward is that a lot of newbie boaters have been lured into a false sense of security/accuracy by the GPS in their car, which magically fixes them right to a particular road. Those units employ some clever software filtering to locate the car on the road, and the same can't be expected on a marine chart with a boat. When I first started using GPS a decade or so ago, I saw my plotted position wander up on dry land while running Georgian Bay's small craft route. Fixes are much better now with the US military having removed signal degrade for civilian users and the advent of WAAS. But plotters can still make mistakes, in refresh rates, in displaying all data layers (like rocks and soundings). They're a great tool, and they've done infinitely more good than harm, but their limitations and foibles need to be heeded.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
Maybe a decade ago when CHS started digitizing charts for GPS nav, they declined to digitize 2239, which was an important chart that covered southeastern Georgian Bay. It turned out it was so inaccurate that the Hope Island lighthouse (and thus Hope Island) was out of position by something like 1,000 feet. So they waited and brought out a whole new replacement chart, 2241. That was an eye-opener. CHS had to do a lot of work to get some charted areas up to snuff for GPS.
When I was at the Toronto boat show in January, I was chatting with a guy who makes third-party charts with shaded elevation and other topo info. We were talking about nav charts in Georgian Bay, and I mentioned that in many areas with "blue" depths, there's been no actual surveying, that these areas often have been guesstimated by CHS looking at aerial photos. He was stunned. Those of us who go looking for private anchorages know that "blue paint" navigation can yield you spots with 10 feet or more of depth...or a bunch of rocks nobody's ever written down.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com
The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia has just released its inquiry into the deaths of two sailors (including owner-skipper Andrew Short) in a catastrophic grounding during the Flinders Islet race last October. It may not seem to have much to do with a C&C 27, but the inquiry is a crucial exposure of the hazards of relying on GPS chart plotters for safe navigation. I've posted at greater length on my cruising blog (www.sweetwatercruising.com) about the inquiry, but the main takeaway points are that this maxi managed to run smack into Flinders Islet in the night despite having two GPS chart plotters. The owner-skipper was navigating almost exclusively by plotter, and as the inquiry outlined, GPS is prone to position degradation linked to the particular configuration of the satellite constellation. A the time of the grounding, there was an estimated degradation of at least 100 meters. The inquiry his critical of the growing trend of sailors relying exclusively on chart plotters, which can have other problems related to internal software. An eye-opener of an inquiry. I'm skeptical of how much play it will get in the boating media, as it highlights operational problems with a particular brand, and the manufacturer declined to cooperate with the inquiry.Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.sweetwatercruising.com