Sunday's sail was an almost completely unmitigated disaster. The sailing part went fine. The part where we put our boat back up on the trailer was not. A combination of a paddling regatta, weenie spectators who parked their cars at the wash stations, and the fact that the regatta crossed the harbor mouth made for a really rotten time. To add insult to injury, my main halyard jammed, sticking the mainsail up on the mast in a harbor that had way too many people paddling way too many boats around.

The main halyard on the P-Cat is a steel cable that hooks onto the mainsail headboard, runs up and over a sheave on the masthead, down the track on the mast (new to me) and onto a winch that's built into the mast (also new to me.)



Other P-Cat sailors have complained about this winch arrangement. The winch is only about 1.5" in diameter, if that, so it has to be one of the slowest ways to raise a sail. The winch handle also has a tendency to fall out of its socket. I've rescued mine off the bottom of the harbor once already. But this was the clincher: the cable fell off the winch drum and jammed between the winch drum and the inside of the mast. No amount of roll-it-back-and-forth got the cable back on the drum. So eventually I had to pull out the cutters and snip my main halyard.

Now I'm in a bit of a quandry. I still have to clear that winch drum, and I need to figure out how to rebuild it or at least remove it. From what I saw, there should have been a single set screw that removes the hub from the winch drum and lets you take the whole thing apart. But just like my mainsail battens (which were bolted into place and peened, if you can believe it), it looks like this set screw was mangled in some way to make disassembly damn near impossible. Right now I may be drilling it out and making new parts.

My plan at the moment is to move forward with rebuilding the thing as-is, with the possibility of adding cheek plates that prevent the halyard from falling off the drum and wedging. But I'm also fishing for ideas for how to do this differently.

The sheave on the P-Cat masthead hangs out aft of the track, so there's no real way to get an "up and over" arrangement like you have on the Hobie or Prindle without making a new masthead. I might be able to modify the masthead to take a larger sheave that would let the main halyard run down inside the mast. This is probably my best approach for a new routing of the halyard, but I'm nervous about it for a variety of reasons. One of them is that my mast is sealed, and this would involve cutting out a bunch of foam. It would also make for an unsealed mast in the future.

Another possibility would be to make a new masthead crane that would bolt to the existing masthead, and supply an additional sheave to bring the halyard down the front of the mast. This leaves me with a sealed mast, but doesn't play nicely with the mainsail arrangement on the P-Cat, which isn't outfitted for a downhaul. Unless I came up with a different way to rig the boom, I don't think I could add a downhaul, either.

I'm guessing the end result will be a rebuilt or a replaced mainsail winch. But if you have any ideas, I'm in the market.

Thanks,

Tom

P.S. I hope some of this makes sense...

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Tom Benedict
Island of Hawaii
P-Cat 18 / Sail# 361 / HA 7633 H / "Smilodon"
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Tom, if your mast head sheave hangs out aft of the track, does the main halyard run up and down aft of the mast?

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TurboHobo
H14T
H16
P18
G-Cat 5.0
P16
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Any way you could modify a H16 or P16 mast head to "fit" your mast head and go with the "up & over" main halyard with a hook and slug setup?

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TurboHobo
H14T
H16
P18
G-Cat 5.0
P16
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If the halyard runs down the track behind the sail you may be able to use the Hobie hook and ring system
like on the 18 or 21. Probably have to mount a pulley on the front crossbar like the 21. The halyard would come down the track and around the pulley. That is the end you pull to raise the sail. The ring mounts at the
head board and catches on a hook that you would have to rivet to the top of the mast.

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Pete Knapp
Schodack landing,NY
Goodall Viper,AHPC Viper,Nacra I20
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The main halyard runs up aft of the mast, and down through the track behind the sail. It makes for a neat mast that doesn't clack in the wind, but it's not my favorite setup. I probably could modify a Hobie or Prindle masthead to fit this mast, or if it came to it I could make a custom one that would get the job done.

Peter, what you say makes good sense. I've got a 21 manual I can take a look at to see the deck end of the halyard. Do you know what the 21 halyard looks like? The Prindle 16 I had was a hybrid, half braided rope and half steel cable. The one I have now is all steel cable. I'm not a huge fan of pulling steel cable with my bare hands. It sounds like using a pre-stretch or low-stretch line for a halyard would work with the system you're describing, but I'd need to see if it would still fit in the track with the sail.

My first preference would be to rebuild this winch and make it so it can't jam like this, just because it gets me out on the water faster. But I'll take a look at Murray's list of Hobie parts to see what this would take.

Thanks,

Tom

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Tom Benedict
Island of Hawaii
P-Cat 18 / Sail# 361 / HA 7633 H / "Smilodon"
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My P18 had the hook and ring setup, my G-Cat has 1/2 wire cable, half halyard line with the slug and hook setup. But I think for your 19' P-Cat, the hook and ring would better stand the larger sail load, but you have to be able to rotate the mast to engage/dis-engage the ring from the hook, the P18 also had a roller sheave mounted at the bottom of the sail track, which would be very easy to install on your P-Cat. Halyard ran over sheave on bottom of sail track, up the inside of the track, out and over the mast sheave which was mounted facing aft.



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TurboHobo
H14T
H16
P18
G-Cat 5.0
P16
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Hey, cool! The P-18 masthead looks very very similar to the P-Cat. And the sail stops well short of the masthead sheave, so there's enough room that adding the hook and ring wouldn't be a problem. SWEET!

I pulled the rest of the cable off the winch on my mast. The screw that should hold all the bits of the winch together has no head on it. I can't tell if it's corrosion, a twisted-off screw head, intentional vandalism by a previous owner, or a combination of all three. In any case I'm going to try to take this thing apart. If it works, all good. If not, that's where the lower sheave and cleat will go in the very near future.

Tom

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Tom Benedict
Island of Hawaii
P-Cat 18 / Sail# 361 / HA 7633 H / "Smilodon"
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The 21 has an all rope halyard. Make sure you look at the 21 se not the sc. the sc does not use a hook and ring.

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Pete Knapp
Schodack landing,NY
Goodall Viper,AHPC Viper,Nacra I20
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