[quote=Wolfman]Love my 5.7, love it, love it, love it. It is super stable, hard to pitchpole (haven't even been close) and hard to screw up. Way more foregiving than my 5.2 (which is a little twitchier now that I have a modern sailplan on it). It doesn't point as high as my 5.7 but does surprisingly well for a no board boat. Super huge uncluttered tramp and very comfortable to sail on.
They made wings for Nacras for about 2 years, good luck finding them. I lucked out and got a set for about $1000 that needed new tramps and adjustments to the beam plugs. I have been thinking of a way of homebuiling wings supporting them using an extra shroud on each side for support similar to the boat in this add [url]http://www.thebeachcats.com/classifieds/larger-multihulls/p11954-custom-33-ft-carbon-ultra-performance-cat.html[/url]. That would simplify the construction and installation.
I love the boomless design. You might lose a bit of speed because of it, but not having to worry about newbs on your boat or getting bashed with it during a blown gybe is really nice.
First thing I did when I bought it was change out the rigging and install a roller furler. You can do it surprisingly cheaply using this furler: [url]http://www.murrays.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=21-0076&Category_Code=C-MO-RF&Store_Code=MS[/url] I was a little concerned but the little furler works great! I just remove the short battens from the stock jib and haven't had a problem on both the 5.2 and 5.7.
The big skeg hulls give you enough floatation for 3 people.
The biggest problem I would look for is stress cracking at the front beam and in the string at the front beam. If you have ports aft of the front beam, make sure you open them and look inside. There is a stringer/wall that goes across the hull under the front beam. It should be undamaged and completely connected to the hull walls. The hulls on top shouldn't show any cracks. You will sometimes see some crazing on the gell coat, that is normally OK, just a consequence of weathering and flexing over the years. Cracking though the gel coat is not. The front beam is the most stressed part of the boat and Nacras tend to die by breaking at the front beam, so pay close attention. The other thing to look for is damaged transoms, if the boat is an early one without pivmatic rudder kickups those can be damaged and are hard to get to for repairs. Most other things can be repaired fairly easily as long as you get a good price.
Damage to the keel near the skegs is common, the gelcoat is usually missing for 3-5 feet near the skeg. I had to repair some small holes in mine and put a wear strip on. Took me about 4 hours total, but I didn't worry about finishing them very nicely (nobody sees the keel anyway I figured).
Minimum main sheet would be a 7:1. 8:1 is ideal for the boat.
Definitely get a righting bag. You have little hope of righting it solo without one. The big hulls and mast mean a lot of weight you have to get over the center of gravity to right it.
Oh and if I forgot to mention it. I LOVE this boat! By far my favorite recreational catamaran. It does so many things so well and can still outrun almost all the other cats of similar price. I had a chance to blow away a couple of H16s this summer and they were just stunned, couldn't believe my big beast could pass them that fast.[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
