Hello fellow beach cat sailors. I just joined the group and I need a favor. For you guys or gals that might have a Hobie 18 I need the hull center to hull center measurement. I am modifying some Cat Trax for a friend who has a H18 but is not at the boat so he cannot take the measurements himself. I need to mount the cradles on hull center and I need to get this done by Friday. ThanksÂ
Hello,
I measured 81" center to center.
Thanks for your help. I got a response on another site confirming the 81" measurement for hull center to hull center.Â
I need to mount the cradles on hull center and I need to get this done by Friday. ThanksÂ
@77sailor Welcome to TheBeachcats
Are you building the cradles or installing ones from Florida Sailcraft that makes the Cat Trax?
https://floridasailcraft.com/product-category/parts-accessories/catamarans/
If possible, please take some pictures as you go and share back here so others can follow along. Lot's of used Cat Trax out there that get modified.
I need to mount the cradles on hull center and I need to get this done by Friday. ThanksÂ@77sailor Welcome to TheBeachcats
Are you building the cradles or installing ones from Florida Sailcraft that makes the Cat Trax?
https://floridasailcraft.com/product-category/parts-accessories/catamarans/
If possible, please take some pictures as you go and share back here so others can follow along. Lot's of used Cat Trax out there that get modified.
Yes... The F18 C2 that I recently purchased came with Cat Trax that also have aluminum cradles from Red Gear Racing that have structural issues if the hulls are not perfectly lined up with the cradles (aluminum sheet that the cradles are fabricated from is a bit too thin).
So I made new cradles from sections of 6" diameter cored PVC pipe.
I cut roughly 12" long sections of the pipe (2 pieces) and 8" long sections (2 pieces)
Made a longitudinal cut on each section.
Put one 12" and 8" pieces in an oven at 350 degrees F. for roughly 5 minutes until they both were very loose and pliable.Â
At the moment, I have the hulls separated from the beams, and one hull is upside-down in my shop. I laid the 12" long piece and 8" long piece over the hull at the hull bottom's widest position and strapped them down with three ratchet-straps so that they will be formed to the contour of the hull.
After cooling, the PVC pieces are then glued together with PL200 polyurethane adhesive. Sand the mating surfaces so that the adhesive has some tooth to key into.
At this point, I made some cradle supports from treated timber 2x4's, with the mating surfaces to the PVC cradles cut in an arc on the band-saw (jig-saw would work too). Affix the cradles to the 2x4's with the PL 2000 and decking screws. Add padding/carpet to the cradles to pamper the hulls.
So, this is as far as I have come at this point.... I've made some individual hull T-trolleys that I will put these cradles on so that I can do some hull repairs that I have discovered. 😥 Appears as if someone had attempted to re-right the boat by standing and jumping up and down on the daggerboards, and cracked the hull's bottom, with the cracks emanating from the leading and trailing edges of the dagger well.
Anyway.... I made four sets of T-trolleys (two 24" long 2x4's fastened into a 'T') with three small wheels each, with two of these trolleys supporting each hull so that I can easily wheel them in and out and around in my shop, with the inverted hull bottoms at about waist level for ease of working on them.
The two layers of PVC make the cradles quite stiff, but still pliable enough that they won't gouge into the hull-sides if the Cat Trax become catawampus (askew) in relation to the cat hulls. And unlike the aluminum cradles, the PVC cradles will spring back to their correct shape after being stressed. AND... the PVC cradles are far easier to fabricate compared to making some fiberglass cradles.... and far less expensive, too.
The two layers of PVC make the cradles quite stiff, but still pliable enough that they won't gouge into the hull-sides if the Cat Trax become catawampus (askew) in relation to the cat hulls. And unlike the aluminum cradles, the PVC cradles will spring back to their correct shape after being stressed. AND... the PVC cradles are far easier to fabricate compared to making some fiberglass cradles.... and far less expensive, too.
Your cradles sound great, pictures! One thing I found on my Hobie 18 Cat Trax and Trailers is that cradles for trailer crossbeams need a little more "wiggle room" and padding than ones for Cat Trax. They also need to be considerably stronger for long distance tows. Your double layer design would probably work.
For anyone less skilled in fabrication here are some fiberglass universal cradles that are available.
https://www.sailboxes.com/universal-cradle/
I just saw your post. The cradles were from Florida Sailcraft and were with the cat Trax which came with the NACRA 6.0 which I bought back in June. I decided to sell them and the buyer needed them mounted to fit his Hobie 18. I appreciate the members who took time to get a measurement in response to my request. My friend picked the cat Trax up last Thursday, sorry I didn't get any pictures taken.
Your cradles sound great, pictures! One thing I found on my Hobie 18 Cat Trax and Trailers is that cradles for trailer crossbeams need a little more "wiggle room" and padding than ones for Cat Trax. They also need to be considerably stronger for long distance tows. Your double layer design would probably work.
This evening I got finished with the individual hull trolley/cradles to move and position each hull so that I can easily fix the hull cracks and fair the bottoms.
On to the next step of getting this C2 back into racing form.
You can faintly see the cracks emanating from the leading and trailing edges of the dagger well.
@cat-scratch very cool, haven't seen anyone do those before.
@cat-scratch very cool, haven't seen anyone do those before.
Thanks!
Yeah, I've done quite a bit of prototyping of ideas with pvc materials -- much less expensive than using Kydex-brand and others' thermo-forming plastics. It's a very readily-available, cheap material, and is super-easy to form and machine (cut, drill, shape, sand). I have made reasonably light-weight and durable micro-controller-instrumentation platforms and containers for powered foot-launched hang gliding (FLPHG) and free-flight HG from pvc material, usually from 2.5" diameter 40-schedual pvc pipe, but this is the first time that I've used the 6" cored pvc pipe material, which is far easier to thermo-form due to it's less-dense core. The final product is also much lighter-weight than the solid 40-schedual material while having about the same rigidity but I've found it to have better elasticity and toughness in a hard impact.
I didn't take my time to make this project pretty-looking.... just wanted it to be functional and strong enough. Yeah, it looks a little rough, but it took me only a couple hours to fabricate the four dollies for working on both hulls.
The wheels came from harbor freight for less than $4 per wheel assembly.
After I'm done repairing the hulls, I'll modify these pvc cradles to affix to the Cat Trax. If I have to make the cradles a bit wider, I can merely stick them back into the toaster oven to warm them up to around 250 degrees F and then form them to a more appropriate shape. Too easy and simple!