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Excuse my curiosity, but while I've heard of stolen electrical wires (copper's worth a mint) and stolen utility poles (aluminum, some town in the US midwest), a stolen keel is unique in my experience. Did they just chainsaw it off or what?
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
On later boats, C&C put the pump high on the starboard side of the cockpit footwell, immediately opposite the engine instrument panel. They reinforced the area with plywood to do it. Having the pump in this location restricts access to the stern somewhat, but it's not serious. Moreover, if you had to pump seriously for a prolonged time, the position is manageable.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Unlike companies such as Hunter, etc., C&C did not sell boats with sails. Dealers (including C&C's company sales force) used to negotiate well-priced sail packages with local sailmakers to offer as an option, but these varied from time to time, location to location. The company's own cruising sail package, if I recall correctly, included a main and a "cruising #1" headsail of about 140% in fairly heavy cloth. There may also have been a #3, but I'm not sure.
If you're having trouble with sail control, consider buying new (or newer) sails. Old sails generally have the draft blown well aft; they usually cannot be adequately flattened in strong winds and are more difficult to feather in puffs. Newer, free-running blocks may help you play the sails more easily in the puffs, which keeps the boat on its feet and sailing happily (skipper & crew, too).
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Lemon-scented Sunlight dish soap is a good smell remover. You should give your bilges a good scrub with a brush to get rid of anything that will hold the smell and air the boat out well.
You don't want any residual smell because the smell of gas in the boat is warning signal no. 1 that you've got a dangerous fuel leak somewhere. (An organic chemist once told me that good instruments sense aromatic chemicals in parts per million, while a good human nose can peg them in parts per trillion. According to him, your best defence against dangerous vapours is to smell the air exhausted by your blower - which you can't do reliably if that air is compromised by the smell of long-gone gasoline.)
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
If you need to repair or replace a hatch lens, there is an article in the Jan 2006 "Sailing" magazine describing a technique that uses commonly available materials from Sikaflex. Given the materials used, this may also be applicable to (at least) the forward glued-in windows of the late Mk III's, the IV's and V's.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
It's not uncommon to see a marine Hubbell connector in the anchor locker, but even a marine connector in an exposed location strikes me as a potential source of problems - water entry to the core, general leaks, etc. House-power fittings (connectors and boxes) are not proof against much more than light rain. If you have GFI's outside your house, you've probably found that they've tripped between uses because water has entered the box either through the receptacles or around the box seals. How effective can they be against a solid wave? These have no business on board a boat.
Because most of us have had a house-power shock at one time or another and not suffered greatly, we tend to be complacent about it. Water, however, improves the current flow to lethal levels for a strong person. Even a properly constructed 3-wire marine AC circuit has its risks; an ungrounded 2-wire connector is flat-out murderous. In the absence of a ground wire, a fault will earth itself through the first person to come near, or jump to the nearest conductor. You could end up with lethally live toerails, lifelines or rigging. While that socket is there, there will always be a temptation to use it. Get rid of it.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
1. Read Deck Repairs II in Black Arts for one owner's experience with preparation and painting.
2. A bright white deck will fry your eyeballs under the summer sun. A friend has this and he is not happy about it. The original C&C "white" was a warm white, but you may prefer something else.
3. My light blue hull was chalked and faded. I rubbed it down with fibreglass compound; some areas even got an application of wet-&-dry sandpaper. Fortunately, a friend loaned me a 6" Makita buffer, a powerful, C$300 tool, for the job. Having used this beast, I'd never use one of those Mickey-Mouse automotive buffers you see around boatyards every spring; the Makita was heavy, but it got the work done in reasonable time. I give it two coats of wax every spring. The topsides look great for about two months, then revert to poxy. They're still better than they were, but the bloom is definitely off the rose. I suppose we'll paint one of these days.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Look under Black Arts >> Hyperion's New Engine, where you will find that Ralph Ainslie removed his gas tank to clean it during the conversion and found its bottom paper-thin. I seem to remember we posted a warning shortly after ("Fuel tank warning", March 04) for people with steel tanks to check them -- a warning that unfortunately antedated your visits to the Forum. Later tanks are aluminum.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
>This is the only site I know of where the graphics are NOT static pictures of boats. Instead, they are colourful, animated vignettes showing two or more boats in motion in many, many different situations.
Now you know about a second one:
http://www.ukhalsey.com/RulesQuiz/index.asp
Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
My mast and boom were pretty disgusting when we bought Towser, so I simply cleaned them with Vim, one of the many mild-abrasive-with-bleach kitchen cleaners (I refuse to call them "cleansers") on the market. The improvement was dramatic. That said, it's still a 25-year-old stick; I'm sometimes tempted to paint it, but then I realize I'd fret about scratches. I'll leave it as it is.
Incidentally, I also cleaned out the track with steel wool and varsol. This vastly eased the business of raising and lowering the main.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Since the stuffing box is threaded just like any other machine screw or bolt, the simplest way to explain this is for you to take a machine screw (or bolt) and put two nuts on it. Hold the screw by its head, imagining that your hand is the stern. First, screw the aftmost nut toward your hand -- this is the retaining nut and you are loosening it. You don't need to move it far, just separate it a bit from the other nut so it no longer locks it.
The forward nut is the compression nut that retains the packing; unscrew it in the same direction as the nut on your demonstration screw. With the retaining nut loose, this should be relatively easy.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
If you're referring to screws with a square recess of about 1/8" - 3/16", these are Robertson head screws. See <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_screwdriver">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_screwdriver</A><A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Screwdriver"></A> .
David Weatherston Towser, Toronto C&C 27 Mk IV
I'll second the value of a water strainer. Normally Towser's strainer has only a few tendrils of weed in it at the end of the season, but the past season was very weedy, so at one point the strainer basket was all but completely full of what looked like aquatic cotton batten.
Had it not been for the strainer, I'd probably have found myself bobbing around on the lake for a couple of hours, fishing that muck out of the engine's heat exchanger. As it was, it took less than five minutes to clear the basket.
As previous discussions have established, our engines have more than enough cooling capacity, even with 1/2" water inlets, so I'm not convinced I'd want to replace that with an inlet large enough to ingest the real problem around here, a plastic bag. What I'd like is an inexpensive flow-meter on that line - something simple that would register flow below some threshold value - to catch a blockage before it turns into an overheat.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Read about it in the windows section of Black Arts.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Bruce Peever's Scalliwag (see The Fleet) is a Mk II with a Shaft Seal and an A4. Write to Bruce for more info.
I don't know where you're writing from, but Bruce told me there is a ridiculous difference between the price of a Shaft Seal in the US and one in Canada. It's well worth it to tap a US friend to act as an intermediary.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Nicro Fico used to make a Dorade box for ventilator cowls similar to those on your stern. The soft plastic assembly plugged into the same fitting used for the cowl, so you could use the ventilators with or without the Dorade fitting, or simply cap the hole when you didn't need the ventilation. Since they don't change the boat too much, they won't affect the value (all boats get sold eventually) and you won't end up with more wood to look after.
I had a quick look on West Marine (search 'Dorade') and they still seem to be available.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Search back through our past posts for a thread called, 'Removing Gate Valves For The Scuppers', for positive opinions on Forespar's Marelon seacocks (or use the search function to look for 'Marelon').
The key thing to remember is that they're not 'plastic', they're fibreglass reinforced plastic, the same stuff your boat is made of (the plastic is different, but the plastic is just a binder). Most builders, even premium names, use them now because they're approved by ABYC, they're tough, they're electrically neutral and they're about 1/2 the price of bronze. They're a long step up from the brass gate valves C&C originally installed (which is what I presume you're replacing).
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
Later: the thing I neglected is that they aren't - or shouldn't be - brass, but bronze. Brass is an ignoble metal in salt water and becomes brittle.
The paint on the inside of my hull looks like plain-jane polyurethane paint (doesn't have the gloss of the marine stuff). Interlux does make a bilge paint that's supposed to be resistant to fuel and other chemicals, but if you keep your boat reasonably clean, it's probably not necessary.
Ken Pole mentions Brightside, which I've found to be a tricky paint. It's essential to sand off the gloss of the surface to be painted or it will pull loose in time (particularly on concave surfaces), but it conforms so closely to surfaces that you have to use a very fine grade of paper or you'll get sanding marks in the finished surface (though this might not be a concern in the bilge). It also sags unpredictably if climatic conditions aren't perfect. The best way to handle it is to roll on a very thin coat, then tip with a dry brush.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
> How can I decide when to change it or get some work done on it.
These are separate questions. You get work done on a sail when it needs repair. You replace a sail when repairs no longer do you any good. If you race, this question is very simple. You buy new sails when your boatspeed is off the pace. If you only cruise, the quesion is more nuanced.
Get work done on a sail when: <ul>
<li> it has an obvious defect, such as a hole, or a rip in it, or when the stitching has come undone;
<li> when the cloth has stretched to the point that the sail has problems setting correctly (this may apply to dacron sails, not laminate, and usually manifests itself as a problem like uncontrollable leach flutter):
</ul>
Get a new sail when: <ul>
<li> when you frequently need repairs - a lot of broken stitching, etc, in the absence of an obvious chafe problem, usually means an over-tired sail;
<li> repairs don't solve problems like uncontrollable leach flutter;
<li> no amount of tweaking will put the sail's draft where you want it to be - it always goes where it goes and that's the end of it;
<li> you put a sail needle through the dacron cloth and the fibres don't part, they simply break.
</ul>
Whether you race or cruise, sailing is more fun with new or newish and well looked after sails that respond to sailor input and make your boat go. If the sparkle has gone out of your sailing (and I suspect that you're asking because you suspect that it has), it's probably time to start investigating sailmakers.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
A folding prop will definitely improve your sailing experience. You'll notice the effect most particularly in light air, but I think a boat feels better balanced, just more "right" when you don't have all that turbulence and drag under you.
Unless someone has replaced the prop shaft, you have a 7/8" shaft with an SAE taper. If you have an Atomic 4, you need RH (right-hand) blades. I had an A4 turning a Flexofold prop with 12x7 RH blades and I thought that was just about perfect, in the sense of driving the boat well in forward and reverse.
As props do differ, that recommendation should be treated as fairly specific to Flexofold. The original 2-blade is 11x7 RH and I seem to remember that my old Martec had slightly less pitch than the Flexofold.
You'll find a lot more discussion of props and pitch using the Search function. If you search for 'prop', you'll get a lot of hits (our search function doesn't discriminate between 'prop' and 'properly'), but you can scroll through the off-topic ones quite quickly.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
I have an Atomic 4, recently rebuilt with rebuilt alternator, freshwater cooling, electronic ignition, rebuilt pumps ... and a mysterious leak of coolant into the oil. Could be serious, could be nothing. Now on Toronto Island.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
If you have the time, I'd strip right away. However, sanding and scraping are loathesome jobs. Either find someone who will come to you and sandblast (my boat was done at the same time as a number of others for just $300) or invest in one of those new enviro-friendly bottom-stripping chemical kits (obviously I haven't used one of these, but I researched them and was about to buy when the sandblasting option appeared -- ask Genco or Oakville Yacht Outfitters about them).
Clare is probably right about the osmosis issue, but if you feel the need to coat, I had good results with Interprotect 2000. You must, however, roll and tip this stuff to get a smooth bottom. If you just roll it on and don't tip it off with a dry brush, it makes an awful orange-peel surface.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
To be effective, an on-line application would have to be paired with an on-line payment system. At low volumes - and even if we got every 27 owner in the world, we'd still be low volume - on-line payment systems take a big slice of your revenue. Since most existing members would take advantage of the convenience, we'd almost certainly suffer a net loss. What's perhaps worse for a volunteer-based organization is that we'd take a serious hit in administrative overhead.
Thanks for the thought, but attractive as the idea may be, it's simply not feasible for a group like this.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
You're welcome - and now for an absolutely shameless plug: The best thanks we can get is your membership in the Association (much of your dues goes to support this Forum).
BTW - if by white hose, you mean that Sealand sanitation hose, I'd be leery of using that long-term. It's very hard, so it won't provide the "give" of the original, softer rubber hose. (I really don't know if that flexibility is essential and unfortunately I don't know anyone to ask, but since it was part of the original and without some knowledgeable advice, I'd be reluctant to change it.)
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
I don't think you need to put a topping lift on a clutch. A high-load cam cleat is more than sufficient. We have the genoa halyard in the cockpit to play the tension under sail, but also to dump tension when the boat is not sailing - much kinder to the sail.
I used the epoxy trick you mention ages ago, but unaccountably had forgotten about it when I re-equipped our present boat. It works well, but I disagree about movement. With any sort of load, everything and anything will move (scientists have been lax in exploring marine hardware tectonics, one of the universe's little-understood constants).
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV