There are some used Hobie 18 wings for sale in my area, any chance I could mod them to fit my GCat 5.7? I owned a Hobie 18 for many years but never had wings so don't really know much about them, other than they are awesome and I want some
jalex wrote: There are some used Hobie 18 wings for sale in my area, any chance I could mod them to fit my GCat 5.7? I owned a Hobie 18 for many years but never had wings so don't really know much about them, other than they are awesome and I want some
I have SX wings on my H18. It appears that modifying these wings would be a significant undertaking and possibly create structural weaknesses that could show up at a bad time. Also, these wings go for big bucks. For that much money, you may be as well off starting from scratch. If you are getting a good deal though, why not cut and weld? Worth a try!
Ideally, if you could leave the H18 wings as-is and make adapters for the connections, you get to retain the value of the wings for resale. Is the H18 and GCat built to similar dimensions? Main concern is distance between fore and aft cross beams. These need to be pretty similar to limit cantilevering.
Sounds like a challenging project. If you need photos or dimensions of my H18 with wings and connection points to get started, let me know. 🙂
h18s are pretty cheap, why not just try and pick one up. if not and option, using the wings on a gcat isn't anything t a little time and $$ can't fix.
The girlfriend won't give up the Gcat's front tramp, so the Hobie 18 is out. Don't really want to become a 3 boat guy either. I guess money would be better spent on something custom than trying to fit something not meant to be. Thanks for the responses
The hobie wings aren't very customizable for other cats. If you are going home made, these trap seats are probably the most elegant solution I have seen.
I've heard of people people use sailboard mast bases for the hinges attached to the hull and attaching the lines to the shroud hound on the mast. Something to consider.
I'm working on some custom wing seats for my 4 Nacra's with the 4" round crossbeams. I had designed some last year that worked out well, but I want to make these so that they can swing up out of the way easily when put on the trailer and hauled down the road. These may also work on crossbeams that are not round, but we'll just have to see in a few weeks once finished with the brackets and weight testing.
Good luck taking this on, I always interested in these retrofit projects.
I will take the time to say that I'm an engineer with a lot of metal fabrication design experience and contacts. I recently took a higher level job that is going to involve less design work so I'm going to start a side biz helping everyday people implement ideas by providing design help and fabrication support. If you need help this could be a portfolio builder for me so let me know if I can help out at all. Low quantity stuff isn't cheap to have done the best way but I know a lot of ways to get the most for the least $$.
PM or send me an email if I can help out at all.