Kenchurch
13th June 2010, 08:13 PM
Hi,
I own hull #2, 2005 Privilege 49.5. I Have lived on it for a couple of years and I am currently sailing in the Caribbean. I have made some modifications/repairs to the boat that may be of some value to other owners...........
Gennaker sail chafes off its halyard. Right from new I repeatedly had this problem. I thought it was just me until I talked to another owner that had the same problem. He finally put the sail away and never used it again. I now have a working gennaker that I am really happy with. Here is what I did..........
It appears the factory supplied gennaker is too long for the space provided so it did not tighten up sufficiently to furl in anything more than a light wind. The furling rope in the sail would knot up and the sail would not come in all of the way when furling it. After many attempts to correct the problem, including raking back the mast more than what is safe, I got in a tight situation, couldn't get it in again, and damaged the unfurled portion of the sail when the winds got up. I took the damaged sail in to a sail maker who installed a new type of 'anti torque' rope into the sail. This improved it a lot but I still needed more tension to make it work and there was still not enough space between the mast head and the bow sprit to adequately tighten it up with the needed tension. I lowered the bow sprit about a ft. by shortening the dolphin strikers and added a double halyard with a block on the sail to raise and tension it really tight. Now it tightens up nice and furls very very well under conditions that were impossible before. We are now getting great use out of it that we were never able to appreciate before. We can use it all of the way from downwind to 60 deg. upwind. We furl it in now at anything over about 16 knot apparent or it requires special techniques to get it in if the wind is higher.
Cockpit lockers in the floor.......... We have 3 lockers in the floor. They do not have a water trough w/drainage built into the closing circumference of the hatches like some cats do which causes salt water that runs down the side top tread surfaces of the boat and on to the top of the rear transoms and instead of going down the steps runs sideways into the cockpit (because of the boat list in windy conditions). From there it floods the lockers (which do have bottom drains) but by then it has made everything in the locker wet with salt water.
I glued a neoprene strip around the opening to create a trough to catch this water and I perforated it in one corner to drain it. The neoprene (or possibly pvc) was purchased at a hardware store. It's normal use was for under a garage door so that when the door closed it pressed the 'hat' section of neoprene down against the concrete. I used contact cement to hold it in place and now after over a year of service I am happy with it.
Tailing lines from the jib and gen. furling lines would cascade down sometimes and get caught in the incoming furling line in the double block below the winch at deck level causing it to fail (costing $200 to repair X 3 times until I fixed it). Now I have a plastic plate about 1 ft. sq. covering the block so that the tailing line is deflected away from the block.
Toe rail water drains.......... These drains are horribly located directly above side hatch windows. Every time it rains all of the water on the side decks drains out thru the toe rail drains and down into any side window left open. We now have 'eye brow' style covers over our side windows to direct the rain (or sea water) away from the windows.
Alignment pulleys for jib furling did not line up from the front of the port hull where they went around a block to the furling drum on the jib. This caused all of the line to load up on one side of the furling drum and usually jam full and not let the jib out all of the way. Placing another block a little higher tied to the port pulpit tubing aligned the line properly.
Fuel supply problems (motors starving for diesel)......... This was a huge problem that I investigated for over a year making numerous repairs and never fixing the problem. Finally I discovered that the Raycor fuel pre-filters had a very short hose barb on them and Privilege put two hose clamps on each side of the filter. Being diligent at tightening the hose clamps and with the hose barb being too short the second hose clamp would tighten on the fuel line and not on the hose barb. This pinched the fuel supply down to a trickle so when a small piece of debris got into the system it would partially plug the line and slow the engine down to an idle. This happened on both the stbd. drive and the gen set. When I finally found the cause I loosened the second clamp off on all 3 engines and now I have no further problems.
Forward locker port takes on water in rough seas....
Again I thought this was just me not tightening down the hatches enough (even if they were well locked). I thought that they must need an adjustment or something. Finally we went through a wicked storm up to 50 knots for 30 hrs. While the boat did well and delivered us safely I found the forward locker port side nearly full to the top with over 3000 lb. of water. I have talked to another Privilege 49.5 owner who similarly has had a lot of problems with this locker taking on water. I am still trying to identify the leak and fix this problem. It appears to be a hatch sealing issue but there is no leak apparent when I am inside the locker with the hatch closed and someone spring water from a garden hose around the hatch circumference. It may be that when the hull is stressed in beg seas the deck flexes enough to break the flat seal around the hatch cover and allows water to come in???
There are a number of other technical things that we have worked at and improved but they are not worth mentioning here.
Yes we are very happy with the boat. It seems to be a very strong boat and after talking to other boat owners (different brands of cats) our problems are trivial.
I own hull #2, 2005 Privilege 49.5. I Have lived on it for a couple of years and I am currently sailing in the Caribbean. I have made some modifications/repairs to the boat that may be of some value to other owners...........
Gennaker sail chafes off its halyard. Right from new I repeatedly had this problem. I thought it was just me until I talked to another owner that had the same problem. He finally put the sail away and never used it again. I now have a working gennaker that I am really happy with. Here is what I did..........
It appears the factory supplied gennaker is too long for the space provided so it did not tighten up sufficiently to furl in anything more than a light wind. The furling rope in the sail would knot up and the sail would not come in all of the way when furling it. After many attempts to correct the problem, including raking back the mast more than what is safe, I got in a tight situation, couldn't get it in again, and damaged the unfurled portion of the sail when the winds got up. I took the damaged sail in to a sail maker who installed a new type of 'anti torque' rope into the sail. This improved it a lot but I still needed more tension to make it work and there was still not enough space between the mast head and the bow sprit to adequately tighten it up with the needed tension. I lowered the bow sprit about a ft. by shortening the dolphin strikers and added a double halyard with a block on the sail to raise and tension it really tight. Now it tightens up nice and furls very very well under conditions that were impossible before. We are now getting great use out of it that we were never able to appreciate before. We can use it all of the way from downwind to 60 deg. upwind. We furl it in now at anything over about 16 knot apparent or it requires special techniques to get it in if the wind is higher.
Cockpit lockers in the floor.......... We have 3 lockers in the floor. They do not have a water trough w/drainage built into the closing circumference of the hatches like some cats do which causes salt water that runs down the side top tread surfaces of the boat and on to the top of the rear transoms and instead of going down the steps runs sideways into the cockpit (because of the boat list in windy conditions). From there it floods the lockers (which do have bottom drains) but by then it has made everything in the locker wet with salt water.
I glued a neoprene strip around the opening to create a trough to catch this water and I perforated it in one corner to drain it. The neoprene (or possibly pvc) was purchased at a hardware store. It's normal use was for under a garage door so that when the door closed it pressed the 'hat' section of neoprene down against the concrete. I used contact cement to hold it in place and now after over a year of service I am happy with it.
Tailing lines from the jib and gen. furling lines would cascade down sometimes and get caught in the incoming furling line in the double block below the winch at deck level causing it to fail (costing $200 to repair X 3 times until I fixed it). Now I have a plastic plate about 1 ft. sq. covering the block so that the tailing line is deflected away from the block.
Toe rail water drains.......... These drains are horribly located directly above side hatch windows. Every time it rains all of the water on the side decks drains out thru the toe rail drains and down into any side window left open. We now have 'eye brow' style covers over our side windows to direct the rain (or sea water) away from the windows.
Alignment pulleys for jib furling did not line up from the front of the port hull where they went around a block to the furling drum on the jib. This caused all of the line to load up on one side of the furling drum and usually jam full and not let the jib out all of the way. Placing another block a little higher tied to the port pulpit tubing aligned the line properly.
Fuel supply problems (motors starving for diesel)......... This was a huge problem that I investigated for over a year making numerous repairs and never fixing the problem. Finally I discovered that the Raycor fuel pre-filters had a very short hose barb on them and Privilege put two hose clamps on each side of the filter. Being diligent at tightening the hose clamps and with the hose barb being too short the second hose clamp would tighten on the fuel line and not on the hose barb. This pinched the fuel supply down to a trickle so when a small piece of debris got into the system it would partially plug the line and slow the engine down to an idle. This happened on both the stbd. drive and the gen set. When I finally found the cause I loosened the second clamp off on all 3 engines and now I have no further problems.
Forward locker port takes on water in rough seas....
Again I thought this was just me not tightening down the hatches enough (even if they were well locked). I thought that they must need an adjustment or something. Finally we went through a wicked storm up to 50 knots for 30 hrs. While the boat did well and delivered us safely I found the forward locker port side nearly full to the top with over 3000 lb. of water. I have talked to another Privilege 49.5 owner who similarly has had a lot of problems with this locker taking on water. I am still trying to identify the leak and fix this problem. It appears to be a hatch sealing issue but there is no leak apparent when I am inside the locker with the hatch closed and someone spring water from a garden hose around the hatch circumference. It may be that when the hull is stressed in beg seas the deck flexes enough to break the flat seal around the hatch cover and allows water to come in???
There are a number of other technical things that we have worked at and improved but they are not worth mentioning here.
Yes we are very happy with the boat. It seems to be a very strong boat and after talking to other boat owners (different brands of cats) our problems are trivial.