C&C 27 Association Forum

Moby-Dick. Many people are frightened of the book because it is long and complex. Some of that complexity is the nautical component, which most people find perplexing or just boring, but sailors will enjoy. Read it in the Norton Critical Edition, whose copious footnotes explain the complex allusions and the whaling methods that are lost on most of us.

If you enjoy Moby-Dick, try In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, which recounts the story of the whaler Essex, sunk by an enraged whale, and the survival of a few of her crew by cannibalism. Sounds lurid, but it provides more illumination of the life of sailors and their home-ports.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

A very dull day - last day of the Toronto Boat Show, the day that everyone describes as the "divorced dads looking for something to do with the kids on custody day", and worse, what one boat salesman described to me earlier in the week as "63 days to sailing season". I hope he uses a calculator to price boats, because by my reckoning, it's a good three months - 90-odd days. A long, grim haul of salt, slush and bottom-sanding and naught but wine and whisky to sustain us. Bear up, Alan.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

So, 500 lb per inch immersion means, leaving aside owner's and guests' junk, that 2.86 Standard North Americans (SNA @ 175 lb. ea. average) or 2.5 Standard North American Fatties (SNF @ 200 lb. ea. average) will immerse the vessel a further inch. However, since they'll all be sitting in a row in the cockpit like bumps on a log and there probably will be four of them, the poor 27 will be down 3-4 inches by the stern, up two in the bow. Not pretty and they'll all be wondering why they're not fast.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

There was a long thread about replacement panels some years back and if I recall correctly, the tide was in Blue Seas' favour for quality and general suitability. Unfortunately, I can't find it. Perhaps someone else's memory is less thoroughly derailed.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

There was a Mk II at our club with the base on the toe rail cut through to allow water to drain. It struck me as an over-reaction to a minor aesthetic problem, given the undoubted significant contribution made by that rail to the boat's strength.

There was a period in the 80's when _everyone_ was fitting cute little drains along the toerail to deal with this "problem". It seems to have stopped when people realized they were adding several hundred dollars in cost plus two more through-hulls below the waterline to solve a problem that can be solved with a 25-cent sponge.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

I wish I'd thought of the lashing trick before, but I think we have a good setup on Towser. The original lifelines were continuous from bow to stern, with a stopper on the aft side of the first stanchion forward of the cockpit. In theory, when you undid the pelican hook at the pushpit, the stopper would keep the forward lifelines taut while allowing the lifelines at the cockpit to drop down onto the deck, out of the way of anything you might be doing over the side.

Of course, the stopper didn't work very well, so when I replaced the lifelines three or four years ago, I terminated the aft end of the forward part of the lifeline with a gate eye on the aft side of the stanchion just forward of the cockpit. The other half of the joined gate eye runs to the pushpit, terminating in contemporary pelican hooks (these actually work, unlike the old Merriman pelican hooks they replaced). Since the stanchion has a brace on it, we can undo the pelican hooks and drop the lifelines right out of the way without losing tension on the lifeline forward of the cockpit.

On the question of knives – Most, if not all the boats I've raced on over the years have had a very sharp knife taped to the vang piston, mast or binnacle and I can recall at least one incident where that kept a serious problem from getting worse. On Towser, I made a brass bracket that accepts the belt loop of the leather sheath of a very sharp knife; it's mounted at the top of the companion. Its only use so far has been to cut a fouled anchor line on a club committee boat, but I am glad to have it there.

Alan, you don't mention how the other (non-turnbuckle) end of your lifelines terminate, but one way to make them instantly droppable would be to replace the turnbuckle with a threaded gate eye (fixed with permanent Lock-tite) and run the lashing between eye and pushpit. You could keep a knife in your sheet bags, or bulkhead-mount a knife as on Towser.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

Towser is a MkIV, so the sail sizes are slightly larger than yours, but the difference is not huge and some of this may help.

Towser is almost all 5/16" Spectra sheets, guys and halyards. The cunningham and outhaul are 3/8" dacron, and the mainsheet is 7/16" (but is due for replacement). I've never heard any complaints about holding the lines; it's what we're all used to and of course, contemporary sticky gloves help. Every line is a different colour for easy identification when the cockpit turns into a rats-nest; this is also a great asset when sailing with people who aren't familiar with the boat.

The primary advantage of thinner lines is that they run through the blocks much faster than thicker material. The disadvantage that people don't mention is that clutches don't grip as well (even the ones ostensibly for that size of line, and if you're going from 7/16", you need to switch), nor do the grippers on our self-tailer primaries. On balance, though, I'd say the lighter line is an unreserved positive.

As to price, I got most of our new line during winter specials - 30 and 50 per cent off if I recall correctly. For the sheets and guys, I just said the hell with it and paid retail, but think I was working more int the $1.60/ft range (you need to go back and put some decimal points in your prices).

Hope this helps.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

Towser has slip-on shroud covers over the lifelines to protect the plastic-covered wire underneath from chafe by sheets and guys. This looks pretty good and might fill the bill for you.

However, I will add that the plastic-covered wire is new as of about three years ago. I read a story in some mag about how the stainless wire can corrode under the plastic and decided that after 25 years or so, the old wire had earned its rest.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

Unless you have a very early boat on which a sliding gooseneck was the equivalent of the cunningham and halyard as your luff-tensioning tool, the gooseneck should be fixed, usually with a machine screw in the track above and below the gooseneck slide, if I remember aright. Of course, if you are still using the roller-boom to reef, you might want to keep the sliding gooseneck and just add a downhaul tackle below the boom, but I think you would be happier fixing the gooseneck position and adding a cunningham. I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you at what height to fix the boom because my boat is put away.

Anyone else out there have access to a mast so they can measure the distance between the slug cutout and the top of the gooseneck fitting?

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

How important is the project to you? Do you have access to a boat? Making a truly accurate model (taking the lines off an extant boat) would be a lot of work (but doable - I'm sure someone in the Marine Museum in Halifax would be able to point you to a source of instruction). On the other hand, if all you want is a boat model that looks sufficiently like a Bluejacket to please the eye, half an hour with a camera would probably give you enough views to turn the trick.

I probably shouldn't repeat this, but an exchange student we had living here gave me a model kit for the Bluenose for Xmas. Now, to me and probably to you, this model looks nothing like Bluenose, but I painted it carefully in Bluenose colours and everyone thinks it looks lovely (I like it, but it only looks like Bluenose in the most general way). Your mileage may vary.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

There are a lot of people who know as much as or more about these boats. I do, however, have the misfortune of having run this site for a long time, so I do know where the answers are. In short, I'm an "aggregator" rather than an expert.

I don't see much point in meeting at Towser in the winter as she is tightly tarped and in spring, prep time on the Island is precious. We might possibly meet at TS&CC - I used to race Wayfarers there on Thursdays and still have friends there. I will let you know if I'm coming to any event.

Just to keep you going, though, a thought... Why not compile a list of questions, right now when they're still fresh in your mind, to which you want answers? Search the Forum for extant answers first, though. Ask the group all the questions that pertain to lay-up right now. Come March, ask the launch prep questions. And so on. You'll ask better questions and get better answers when the topics are top-of-mind for you and for your responders. (A printer once told me that if you want to see the best quality from any press, ask them to print a hockey book during the play-offs - the pressmen are interested, they're motivated and there won't be a dot out of place - it's kinda like that.)

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV

There is an excellent summation of the possible problems by Marcus (username carriden) in the thread, "removing lower shrouds for winter storage". Paste that in the 'subject' search field.

David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV