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The elephant in the room comes out if you turtle in water shallow enough to snag the mast. Then it gets ugly! Hard bottoms can do damage, and soft gooey soils would get it stuck, another bad option. In 6 years I've never capsized, but it's still nice to know that if she was ever laying on her...

There's a post from way back when that showed how Capri looks when she's laying on her side with a Baby Bob float on top of the mast. The boat sits high enough on the down rail that no water enters the cockpit. Of course this applies to calm water conditions, if there's heavy wave action that's...

There's a bunch of wood stringers in the space between the cockpit floor and the hull below. Hopefully they're not also rotting out. There's no way to tell unless you were to pull off the cockpit. Another area of concern is the condition of the wood beam that supports the mast base. Check my...

For the size of this boat and the most practical setup for a motor I truly believe this is the best way to go..... **Two small AGM batteries give the choice of only needing one for low demand conditions, with the option to run the second one in series when a heavy demand is anticipated. See how...

Scroll back and breeze through my earlier posts, you'll see a wealth of information about my trolling motor setup. In my opinion it's the best overall compromise for the task at hand!

The only thing I don't get is let's take a look at the seating arrangement of a Capri type sailboat and compare that to a true rowboat. Sailboat's seats are paralell to the length and are on both sides. Where would one sit to be able to grab both oars? Not to mention having to store the oars...

Yep and that was a super duper feat of engineering! I've seen all the different approaches taken to design the attaching devices and this one leaves them all in the dust! I can easily pop the Bob on/off in less than a minute anytime I do the mast hoist/lowering. There's a procedure to be...

I needed to replace the shrouds on my 1986 Mod 1. C-Direct sold a stock version of these, but knowing that there are two different versions on the Capri made since then, I erred to the side of caution when ordering these. The length of the stock version was stated to be somewhat shorter than...

Yep, one of the luxuries of keeping the boat on it's trailer is no worries about bottom upkeep. And I don't have to sweat if a storm comes through, compared to wet mooring tied up to a dock. If you're on a can then you need to get to the boat somehow and load your stuff on. Of course if you have...

Agreed that the keel version is a whole different ballgame compared to the swing board model. If boat's staying wet moored that's great, but when you're storing on a trailer it would seem to be a hassle. My swing board is a snap to launch/retrieve with the setup I developed. Sits low on the...

I was using an engineer's field measurement tape, which showed the 15 and 8 tenths feet that you see in the pic. 8 tenths of a foot converts to 10". So I would say 15'9 3/4" is about what I measured. Like I said, if I would have ordered the ones showed on their website (and I confirmed with...

So my 1986 Mod 1 needed new shrouds. I measured a skosh under 15.8' (my tape was in decimals). .83=10", so this equates to about 15'10". Now if you check with Catalina Direct, the ones they sell premade were about an inch shorter! Glad I had them custom make mine to duplicate what I had, that...

If your tiller is deteriorated but still usable maybe you could just throw a coat of varnish on to seal it, then sit back and wait until the replacement item becomes available at C-Direct. The main thing is to keep sailing! It's unfortunate there's no way to hook up with somebody who owns a...

Last outing I was running at planing speed quite a bit. Noticed a fair amount of water finding it's way into the cockpit through the slot. What happens is that while running fast downwind the stern gets lower as the bow is in a planing trim, just like a power boat when it just starts to plane...

I dropped mine into Lake Michigan first season I had her, 6 years ago. Weather called for light winds so I wanted to get a taste of the big lake with my little Capri. Motored out from the launch with my little Minkota and got ready to hoist the canvas. Sure enough I get out a ways and winds...

Yep about the only thing I know about those lakes way down south is that they are there. There's a lot more action up north. I have a launch pass at Diamond Lake in Mundelien, it's much larger than Opeka with decent facilities and a few nice restaurants within walking distance. And Opeka is also...

Ok so you're a far south sider! Now about the only small user friendly lake I know of down that way is a Forest Preserve facility called Saganaskee Slough Boat Launch. 107th St. in Willow Springs. 800-870-3666 fpdcc.com and you can see it on Google Earth. Hopefully deep enough to handle the...

Go back through the posts and you'll see two different approaches to the repair. In those cases the root cause of failure was a rotted support beam. I suggest taking a real hard look at the condition of your beam to assure it can hold up for the long term. If it's solid I'm sure a custom made...

Just curious, what lakes are down that way?

According to Google VIN's supposed to be on a silver sticker at the front of the trailer on the inside of the rail on the passenger side. A decal is also placed on the bottom of the tongue of the trailer. Happy hunting!