Catalac 8m

Stemar

Stemar

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I've been offered one in sound condition, at an interesting price

Twin 20Hp Betas in good nick and she's a tidy boat, but she needs new standing and running rigging, sails, instruments and a wiring update. None of this work scares me, I'd have a provisional budget of around £5K, but could go a bit further

Is that budget realistic? I appreciate it's a bit "How long is a piece of string?", but funds are far from unlimited. I'm looking for a decent set-up for the instruments - probably NMEA , but not a Megabucks WhizBang setup.

I understand that they're solidly built and go well off the wind, but going to windward is what the twin Betas are for. Anything else I need to know about them?
 
Back when they were newish I chartered one for a fortnight, though that one was outboard powered. Perfect for running up beaches and letting young children (about 2 and 4) off to play. They will sail to windward, but not that briliantly. Reaching given enough breeze to get moving faster than many monohulls.
 
I think that 5k might be a bit tight but with twin 20s the sails don't matter to much! The wiring is easy, though depending upon hull number you may need to find new cable routes as early ones didn't always have good ducting.
CO8 who posts on here has an 8m so should be well placed to answer questions as mine is a 9m.
 
I've seen you and your wife often sat in your little cockpit enjoying fod and drink.
The catalac will bring so much more extra space for you to both enjoy .
Have a chat with kev and Chris on Coppercat as they had a catalac for many years and appear to have a lot of knowledge about them.
 
Boathook said:
I think that 5k might be a bit tight but with twin 20s the sails don't matter to much! The wiring is easy, though depending upon hull number you may need to find new cable routes as early ones didn't always have good ducting.
CO8 who posts on here has an 8m so should be well placed to answer questions as mine is a 9m.
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Yes. I'm halfway through a refit of my Moody 31, a comparable vessel. Standing rigging and sails alone will eat most of 5k. Instruments will eat maybe another 5k, though there may be more "slop" in that figure, depending on what you need to install; I'm going for a fairly major upgrade! And don't forget incidentals like stopcocks and through-hulls; they should certainly be checked and replaced as needed. General "boatyard" tasks could easily eat another 2k.
 
As suggested £5k might get you rigging and basic sails. On electronics, Speed/Depth is £600 for top brands, MFD for chart plotter £800+. Wind another £600, Autopilot, £1300 (wheelpiot). If you are not bothered about easy integration you can go the NASA route which roughly halves the basic instrument costs.

So you should be really looking at closer to £10k.
 
The sails and rigging for our 8m Catalac cost about 5k.
We have a London Chartplotters Panasonic Toughbook chartplotter and basic Nasa instruments. The Auto Helm is old and uses a notched rubber belt.

I am just about to install a second hand Fish Finder to get better information on beaches I want to dry out on.
The instruments can be upgraded at a later time depending on what you want to do and how deep your pockets.
Sailing to windward is not the best as you know but made up for by the living area. A full sized double bed but with your feet under the foredeck.
These boats do have the corkscrew motion that you do not get with a mono Hull. Our kettle has never fallen off the ungimbeled stove and is usable a most of the time

If you can come up to North Wales you are welcome to come out on ours. Pm me for my phone need if you want to chat about the boat.
 
The trouble is that "instruments" can cover a multitude of possibilities, from basic depth and log, up to radar, AIS transponder, fish-finder and so on. It could go from a few hundred up to thousands. Sails and rigging are likely to be a fairly consistent price for a boat of a particular size, so the various estimates presented here all stick around £5k, but for instruments, you could be looking at anything from below £1000 to upwards of £5000. It depends on the sort of sailing the OP wants to do, and proficiency in different navigational techniques. The first boats I was involved in navigating had compass, depth and speed; chart-plotters weren't even a twinkle in anyone's eye! But navigating with those does require a certain skill-set that is, perhaps, less common these days than it once was - not merely because of the advent of chart-plotters but also because mathematics is no longer taught in the same way at school.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
The trouble is that "instruments" can cover a multitude of possibilities, from basic depth and log, up to radar, AIS transponder, fish-finder and so on. It could go from a few hundred up to thousands. Sails and rigging are likely to be a fairly consistent price for a boat of a particular size, so the various estimates presented here all stick around £5k, but for instruments, you could be looking at anything from below £1000 to upwards of £5000. It depends on the sort of sailing the OP wants to do, and proficiency in different navigational techniques. The first boats I was involved in navigating had compass, depth and speed; chart-plotters weren't even a twinkle in anyone's eye! But navigating with those does require a certain skill-set that is, perhaps, less common these days than it once was - not merely because of the advent of chart-plotters but also because mathematics is no longer taught in the same way at school.
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It's an old low value low performance small boat being equipped on a tight budget. I'd stick basic Nasa instruments on, a steering compass, Cobra VHF with a GPS mouse & use an Android tablet with built in GPS, OpenCPN + O-charts inside the cabin. Whole lot if self installed will leave change from £1k.
 
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Well, I've made a few phone calls. My £5K would get me a new rig and white sails. :eek:

Then there's a review of the electrics. Probably LED nav lights, deck light, all LED bulbs and the now-essential USB chargers. Instruments - NASA Duet with the ultrasonic log transducer at £330 would do for instruments, maybe £500. There's already a compass, so plotter, as Angus says, a tablet (recommendations?), that I'd like to be daylight viewable, though I think I'd go with Navionics, as I'm not a huge fan of Open CPN. I suppose a couple of hundred would get me a decent tablet, so I'll work on a grand for the lot.

Next question, what would a tidy boat with this setup be worth when it's done?
 
Over £300 just for a raymarine wind masthead unit.
£180 for a whole nasa system.
I wonder which brand is a rip off ?
 
Stemar said:
Well, I've made a few phone calls. My £5K would get me a new rig and white sails. :eek:

Then there's a review of the electrics. Probably LED nav lights, deck light, all LED bulbs and the now-essential USB chargers. Instruments - NASA Duet with the ultrasonic log transducer at £330 would do for instruments, maybe £500. There's already a compass, so plotter, as Angus says, a tablet (recommendations?), that I'd like to be daylight viewable, though I think I'd go with Navionics, as I'm not a huge fan of Open CPN. I suppose a couple of hundred would get me a decent tablet, so I'll work on a grand for the lot.

Next question, what would a tidy boat with this setup be worth when it's done?
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Much the same as it was before doing the work. This all falls into the category of expected maintenance. At best, it would make the boat easier to sell, and you might get a price at the higher end of the range for the boat - but don't expect to get your money back.
 
About how much would that be? A project boat, which this is, seems to me to be worth an average boat less the work needed. At least, that's what it's worth to me.

I fear my offer is likely to provoke some distress in the current owner, as I'm pretty sure he has no idea of the costs involved in getting her up to scratch
 
Stemar said:
About how much would that be? A project boat, which this is, seems to me to be worth an average boat less the work needed. At least, that's what it's worth to me.

I fear my offer is likely to provoke some distress in the current owner, as I'm pretty sure he has no idea of the costs involved in getting her up to scratch
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Pretty common scenario. Went through that last year with a boat that the owner still saw as the highly desirable boat he bought 8 years earlier - but not able to see that 3 years of neglect ha knocked thousands off its value. Still for sale at an unrealistic asking price.

You are right in your assessment, just hope the seller agrees!
 
Stemar said:
I've been offered one in sound condition, at an interesting price

Twin 20Hp Betas in good nick and she's a tidy boat, but she needs new standing and running rigging, sails, instruments and a wiring update. None of this work scares me, I'd have a provisional budget of around £5K, but could go a bit further

Is that budget realistic? I appreciate it's a bit "How long is a piece of string?", but funds are far from unlimited. I'm looking for a decent set-up for the instruments - probably NMEA , but not a Megabucks WhizBang setup.

I understand that they're solidly built and go well off the wind, but going to windward is what the twin Betas are for. Anything else I need to know about them?
Click to expand...
As one who used to sail happily without any electronicary , just a compass, a clock and a barometer I have to smile.
 
Its a MoBo!

If you are thinking of selling it before you buy it - don't get excited about installing instruments. Leave that to the new owner - whose needs may be very different to yours. You will expect a return on the instruments he may not want......

You have a compass, depth might be invaluable - sort out a tablet (use it inside the saloon, viewable from the helm?) and you have an MFD - maybe go sailing before you sell it - and you might then want to keep her and then invest in an instrument package. If you cannot assess the wind, on your cheeks - I'd be surprised (and disappointed). What other instruments do you really need.

The only time you actually need wind is when you are sailing down wind and you tend to lack an appreciation of how strong the wind has become - in the excitement of getting into the teens of knots.

See post 18, except if you listen to forecast you don't need the baro and if you use a tablet you don't need a clock - all you need is the smile :)

Jonathan
 
No plans to sell on, I just don't want to sink a load more money into an "investment" than it'll ever be worth, but I do want to pay a fair price, not rip the owner off. We've had our current boat for 18 years and hope to get at least 10 out of this one (if...) It's a matter of getting her set up the way we want her and keeping her up to scratch then, I hope, sell her when we aren't able to keep her up to scratch, but before she deteriorates again.

Its a MoBo! You're not wrong. That's exactly how she's been used for the last several years. Milady is looking quite favourably on the idea of the French canals.

25931 said:
As one who used to sail happily without any electronicary , just a compass, a clock and a barometer I have to smile.
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I've got that T shirt too, and could still do it, just as I've driven a car without synchromesh or heating, a starting handle and hand signals only (the trafficators never worked), but life is so much more pleasant with climate control.

Do I need a plotter to pootle around the Solent? Of course not, but should we head across the channel, a GPS does seem like a good idea. so I know I'm going to end up in Cherbourg, rather than wondering if the land I can see is Barfleur or Omonville la Rogue. A plotter on a tablet is no dearer now than the basic GPS I got for Jissel shortly after I bought her. Also, few would argue that a depth sounder isn't essential for anything too big to get out and push, nor VHF for when it all goes horribly wrong. For most cats I'd want a wind instrument, but I suspect that if a Catalac is overpowered, she'd just skitter off sideways rather than fall over.

Having frightened myself with the prices of clever stuff (how do these Youtubers do it?), I reckon it's NASA for the instruments and a tablet for navigation, with my phone as a backup.
 
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