I Want to Go Fast and Party Too (Maine Cat 22)

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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
My friend and I are under contract on the Maine Cat that has been listed for a while in VA. 

https://www.mecat.com/brokerage/maine-cat-22/

We traveled up for a test sail a few weekends ago, made and offer, and now we are in the process of planning transportation.  We have a few projects and goals and I'll be posting here as things develop and our experiences with the boat.

Our planned projects are as follows....#1 and #2 are definitely happening, the remaining are just daydreams at the moment.  

1.  Customizing a Trailer and Transporting

2.  Replacing/Rebuilding so of the deck hardware

3.  Replacing halyards and control lines

4.  Adding a DIY, open source, chartplotter/datalogger/windspeed/wind vane etc

5.  Maybe adding a bowsprit with furling light wind sail of some kind..

For now, we are just going to get it home, fix the critical pieces (eg, traveler) and enjoy getting to know the boat.

Stay Tuned!

-Patrick

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
The first challenge is building a trailer.  We are currenlty planning to start with a 22' to 24' flat bottom boat trailer or pontoon boat trailer, and then add custom elements on that either fold or detach to handle the folding/unfolding.  We have looked at a few trailer frames but it's hard to visualize exactly what we need.  So I've built a contour gauge, and then designed the rough CAD model so I can see what the various frames look like underneath in terms of where the axle will be relative to the hulls, the winch post etc.




 
Rasputin22

Rasputin22

Rasputin22
14,126
3,670
Nice to see your approach to modeling in Blender. I do boat design in Rhino3D and have tried Blender every few years but there is something about it that I just can't connect with. Don't see much boat work done in Blender. 

    You will love the Maine Cat. Keep your efforts documented. Someone here was going to buy one a couple of years ago and it sounded he just wanted to put stupid large OB motors on it and ruin a great boat. I think he got a load of shit from the gang here and hope he didn't bastardize the Newick design. You sound like you are on the right track!

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
I named my thread after the original I wanna go fast and party thread, which was entertaining to say the least.  I'll keep this thread about my Maine Cat other than the title :).  I did offer to take that boat off of his hands or even the rig/sails but we never connected.  I think Chanceman is busy.

 Blender is not great for boat modelling, but it's free and I'm very experienced with it.  It has practically no NURBS or surface tools.  But now I have a reasonable model for mocking up the trailer...and bow sprit etc.  More to come.

 

 
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mundt

Anarchist
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I think those are very some very nice, though rare boats.  I would keep everything as simple and light as possible since it's already a somewhat heavy boat.  I've found that handheld gps, or phone, tablet or smartwatch gives me plenty of info.  My fitbit ionic has been great for tracking and giving speed etc. though the bluetooth music function is glitchy.   

 
cyclone

cyclone

Super Anarchist
1,496
733
Maine
I was able to go for a test sail with Dick Vermeulen in Portland when the 22 was introduced. What a great boat. Unfortunately Maine Cat made minimal if any profit on each one built so there was only a short run prior to moving on to the larger boats. Maine Cat may have information about the original trailer. You’re going to have fun.

 
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patmo141

Member
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76
Eastern NC
We found a decent trailer frame from a 24' flat bottom boat for a reasonable price.  A local steel supply co can provide a 20 foot sticks of galvanized square tubing.  Our initial thought is to just have some simple telescoping bars.





Trailer Frame = $800

20 feet of 2"  square 3/16" wall thickness galvanized tubing for $125

20 feet of 2.5" square 3/16" wall thickness galvanized tubing $150

12, 2 foot segments of 2 x 10".  A 12' board is 17.50 at Home Depot = $35

U bolts and tie plates for telescoping cross members = $50 (estimated 2 x $20 kits)

Central Bunks = $75

Total = $1235, and lets just say $1500 by the time we actually figure out what we are doing.  Not bad

 
Zonker

Zonker

Super Anarchist
10,209
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Check out Richard Woods smaller cats. He has hulls that fold under a central cuddy. Lots of photos of the boats on trailers. Might give you some good ideas.

 
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randii

Member
430
130
Sacramento area
Be very careful welding/cutting galv... lots of ventilation even when grinding and especially when burning wire. No worries for slow-speed toothed tooling, as with a bandsaw.

I looked at a Brine Shrimp which had a similar fold-in-the-middle design... it was trailered and launched folded, then unfolded and rigged in the water and I was impressed at the simplicity/elegance of that. Unless you are going to drysail and store mast-up, you may be able to get buy with simple padded cradles.

Randii

 
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boardhead

Anarchist
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Pennsylvania, US.
Good friend owns one, previously owned a couple of F40’s and a carbon Roberts 22 ( super Supercat) - he loves the MC22, fits his needs perfectly.

I helped him out with some performance upgrades - rotating the stock spar, Spectra rigging, different profile, durable sails inc. vertical batten furling jib and a screecher - fast, handy and comfy.

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
boardhead said:
Good friend owns one, previously owned a couple of F40’s and a carbon Roberts 22 ( super Supercat) - he loves the MC22, fits his needs perfectly.

I helped him out with some performance upgrades - rotating the stock spar, Spectra rigging, different profile, durable sails inc. vertical batten furling jib and a screecher - fast, handy and comfy.
Click to expand...
I would love to hear more about screecher!  Can we get your friend on here?  It's hard to find info about these boats, and even harder to find current owners.

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
mundt said:
I think those are very some very nice, though rare boats.  I would keep everything as simple and light as possible since it's already a somewhat heavy boat.  I've found that handheld gps, or phone, tablet or smartwatch gives me plenty of info.  My fitbit ionic has been great for tracking and giving speed etc. though the bluetooth music function is glitchy.   
Click to expand...
Just the GPS on a phone does a great job.  The chartplotter/datalogger project is just a geeky form of additional entertainment with almost zero practical necessity.  I will be getting a drone flight controller (has GPS, acellerometers and compass) and interfacing it with a wind vane and anemometer.  The popular open source flight control software "Ardupilot" has recently been updated to include code/framework for sailing vessels.  We won't be steering the boat with this but it will tack apparent wind speed/angle, VMG, speed over ground etc etc.  My goal would be to generate a polar plot for the boat.  For anyone interested:

https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/sailboat-support/32060

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
Got the galvanized tubing and all the u bolts and tie plates for the telescoping wings today.  The steel supply shop cut it for me.  All I had to do was knock off the burs and sharp edges with an angle grinder.  Progress.



This is not the trailer frame we are using, but it worked as a decent stand in for the moment.

 
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patmo141

Member
135
76
Eastern NC
Got some parts and pieces assembled for our little DIY autopilot/data logger.

GPS, (apparent) wind direction, heading, speed over ground all working.  Next is setting up the wind speed sensor.



The trailer is coming along as .  We have the frame and have it ready to apply our custom bunks.

 
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patmo141

Member
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Eastern NC
Arrived in home port at 2am.  Tomorrow we unfold, rig and relaunch.  Full story on the retrieval journey later.

IMG_20190601_174309.jpg

 
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