The story of a troll
I have to admit right up front that I am one of those people that rely on the information that many of you provide. Some of that information is not helpful, but much of it really is. Normally I just Google or follow various websites like BeachCat.com in the case of small boats, but I will look at almost anything that follows a topic I’m interested in. I learn from what you all post and I will admit that. So it is time for this troll to pay back. My boat “This End Up” is a storied boat was bought from the NACRA plant in Santa Barbara back, way back in about 1976 when Tom Roland was the owner of NACRA.

I had sailed Hobie 14's and 16’s, but I had seen in the press at the time there were better and faster boats (no offense Hobie people). At the time I was the guy running a small marina in Olympia, Washington. The owner of the marina wanted to get into selling sailboats, but didn’t want the costs of flooring big monohulls. I convinced him that the future of sailboats was catamarans and that we could be a dealer for a small company selling really fast cats. The Hobie dealership was doing really well in those days and my argument made sense, sort of.

So the owner agreed to go into the sailboat selling business and we bought three NACRA 5.2 boats on our initial order. Then it was up to me to go down to Santa Barbara and meet with Tom Roland and bring the first boat back to Olympia, Washington. Hard to imagine even now going into a small facility making these small boats. Tom was very informative about why these little boats were so much faster than the ubiquitous Hobie 16’s. He went into great detail about the flotation forward, the clean hull lines and no deck joining lips and probably a ton of stuff I have long since forgotten.
So they loaded the first boat up on a very light trailer. The hulls were in long boxes. There was a box for the beams and rigging and there was this 28’ long mast. It was all boxed up very nicely for assembly in Olympia and strapped to the trailer. I was driving a super powerful 1975 VW Rabbit. Very impressive driving out of Santa Barbara with cardboard boxes and this incredible long piece of aluminum sticking way beyond the windshield of the Rabbit. On to Olympia I went.

So this is the first installment of the story of the latest rebuild of This End Up. This time I will upload video to YouTube showing the boat and what I am doing and why I am doing it the way that I am. Make no mistake that I have been paying attention to what you all have been doing all these years. I have sort of ignored this very cool boat for a few years, but it is time to update this boat and then go sailing in some of the special places in this world. I also want to add the concept of multi-day sailing in a beach cat. I have been rafting for the last few years and I think some of the products and practices of a rafter can be applied to sailing these small boats to locations and in a time frame that most boaters can barely imagine.

I have no experience doing these kinds of videos so my apologies come first. What I want to show you is the detail you need to know when you undertake the restoration of an older cat. There is much of this information already on BeachCats.com I just want to show the process and how sort of easy this work is. There are a ton of steps, but they are reasonably easy to sort out. I would encourage anyone with half a clue and access to Google to take any of these projects on, if they have the will to push through and pay attention to the details that are required to get a good result.

As soon as the first installment of the video is available I will post it. While this is a priority project at our house, it is not the only one, so bear with. Hopefully the first upload will be completed tonight. I am uploading the first video tonight. As soon as I have a link I will post it. The visual story begins.

Dave

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dg
NACRA 5.2 #400
This End Up
Original owner since 1975
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I was driving a super powerful 1975 VW Rabbit

Memories. I owned a '76 Rabbit, not quite lime green, nor grass green, nor medium green. My oldest kid still refers to it as the ugliest color ever painted on a car.
I can't imagine towing anything behind a Rabbit.

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Hobie 18 Magnum
Dart 15
Mystere 6.0XL Sold Was a handful solo
Nacra 5.7
Nacra 5.0
Bombardier Invitation (Now officially DEAD)
Various other Dock cluttering WaterCrap
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8i7dEBBFE4]

Here is the first video installment on this project.
My Rabbit was that pumpkin color and it towed the NACRA just fine all up and down the west coast.

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dg
NACRA 5.2 #400
This End Up
Original owner since 1975
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Always cool to hear/read these stories... Tom Rolland is neighbor and sometime makes a post for one of our local races.... along with Roy Seaman..

I remember talking to him one day about the 5.2.... as he put it, "you could hit that boat with a sledge hammer and it would still sail..."

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John Schwartz
Ventura, CA
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dmgbear55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8i7dEBBFE4

Strong start.
The info on the rivet holes in the mast was reassuring.
NACRA used Monel rivets also, no?

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Sheet In!
Bob
_/)_____/)_/)____/)____/)_____/)/)__________/)__
Prindle 18-2 #244 "Wakizashi"
Prindle 16 #3690 "Pegasus" Sold (sigh)
AZ Multihull Fleet 42 member
(Way) Past Commodore of Prindle Fleet 14
Arizona, USA
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Most of the rivets in the mast are Monel, but there are a few that are aluminum, like to attach the cap and base. Those rivets do not see any significant loading and simply retain the castings. The first order of Monel rivets showed up today, a mere $100 worth of them and that is just the first installment. I haven't counted all the others I have now drilled out. I should have another video together shortly. At that point I will start a new thread in the Technical section. I am having lots of fun sorting out the best, most practical way to refinish all this aluminum in a reasonably safe and environmentally friendly way. Not an easy thing with aluminum.

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dg
NACRA 5.2 #400
This End Up
Original owner since 1975
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Maybe there is more corrosion on that front beam that didn't show in the video...it looked OK to me. Usually it gets eaten away right where the DS rod goes through, yours looks fine.
I changed one on my 5.7 a few years ago, here's the steps...of course you won't be cutting your DS rod. Be careful when re-tensioning it, SS has a tendency to gall & cold weld itself, bit of anti-seize compound on threads.
The car I mentioned wrecking the door paint with grinder debris was my Rabbit!
http://www.thebeachcats.c…pictures?g2_itemId=73301

Quote

Tom Rolland is neighbor and sometime makes a post for one of our local races....

That's good to hear. I was out in Malibu a few years ago, bought a spare 5.7 sail from a fellow who had sailed with Mr Rolland on his speed record project with the Nacra 36. Showed me a photo of them sailing it. He said he had a number of companies, one of which built battens for Nacra, he still had hundreds of them, along with a plethora of other Nacra parts.
I asked him how Tom was doing, his answer was, "not well".

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Hobie 18 Magnum
Dart 15
Mystere 6.0XL Sold Was a handful solo
Nacra 5.7
Nacra 5.0
Bombardier Invitation (Now officially DEAD)
Various other Dock cluttering WaterCrap
--

Somewhere along the line I updated the base of the mast and it seems like that also required a change to the DS. What is interesting is that there was silicone all over the DS threads. I suspect that silicone is what stopped the corrosion. I'm uploading another long video tonight of the last couple of days work. I'm still struggling with a finishing process I can accept for the aluminum. Got part of the answer this morning from Interlux/Awlgrip but I need to confirm a couple of really key details. Part of the process is to lightly sandblast the pitted areas. I have never done any sandblasting, but have had the cheapo version of one hanging on the wall for years. Now I get to track down some blasting media. I think a very light blast of each of the rivet holes will go a long way to getting primer and then finish to adhere to these hole. My biggest concern from the beginning was rivet holes enlarging and if I can do something that puts that to stop for the future that is a big bonus.

I really enjoyed sailing with Tom and his brother back in the day. This whole crazy project is their fault. These boats are just too much fun to ever let go of them. A friend and I slept in the back of my Rabbit at the plant in Santa Barbara before heading over to Lake Havasu with a bunch of the local boaters. That was a trip that created a thousand good stories or lies, depending on your point of view.

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dg
NACRA 5.2 #400
This End Up
Original owner since 1975
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