First Sail in my 1987

Hello --

Jim in palm beach county, fla. here, hull 1857, a 1987 mod one introducing myself and inspired by all the great first time sailing stories to share mine, although I cannot say that I remotely approached the adventure some have reported here.

I've owned her for 7 weeks now, and was thrilled to find this great little boat in good condition, although I have needed to replace the stays, upgrade to a roller furling jib, replace the inadequate wood cuddy door with a plastic hatch that actually seals, add a Baby Bob mast float, and rig up oars and oarlocks on old jib car sliders when I bought new ones. Thanks to everyone who posted on those topics it made the process much easier.

All that took awhile, and then the weather got uncooperative with over a week of gusty winds. So. Fla. has two distinct seasons, and starting about this time of year it's very hot and humid and strong thunderstorms are practically a daily certainty. Finally yesterday the radar was quiet, although b/c they were insistently forecasting boomers that was not clear until about 5:00 pm so my first was a nice sunset and full moon sail. Even got some of those big, sharp rays of the setting sun through cloud breaks for awhile.

Great little boat, ain't she?? The wind averaged about 5 mph gusting to maybe 8 and she just leaped ahead every time the sails filled. I sailed only on the main and it was still spirited. I'm by no means an experienced sailor, but it seemed to me to be responsive and predictable in handling. Only wish I could've gotten out earlier and had more time.

I can see how heavy air would make for some wild and wet times and will forego those until I've gained much more experience. I do hate having that big float up on the mast, but probably all my sailing will be in depths that could stick the rig if I turtled it.

Only downer on the day was that I discovered the city of Lake Worth has followed our county by charging a $10.00 trailer parking fee at their ramp at the intracoastal and I only had 4 dollar bills in my wallet. The quarters in my truck's cupholders kept me parked legal, but L.W. has alot of poor immigrant guys living there and the one who insisted on helping me rig and step the mast wound up getting stiffed. I hope to see him next time and show the respect.

Got summonsed for federal grand jury duty tomorrow otherwise I'd be back out there again sailing this sweet little speedster for sure!! :cool:
 
I also have a 1987 Capri, please tell me more about the replacement cuddy door. Such as where to get one and part number.
 
Plastic Hatch Installed on Mod. One

The hatch is a T.H. Marine HDS-1317-3REM-00, hingeless, in sandshell color which comes pretty close to matching the gelcoat on my 1987. Hingeless because it can be complete removed since access is tight, but the trade-off is that it’s four latches do take longer to open and close and it could be lost overboard. It was not hard to fit and install, but did involve a lot of measuring and trimming. Of the hatch, that is, I decided not to do any cutting and only as much drilling as absolutely necessary to the boat.

Sized 17x13, it fit the opening vertically and was about two inches too narrow. Overall I lost about one half inch vertical and 2.5 inches in horizontal opening. I was okay with that since I am over six feet and had to really work to get more than my head and about one and one half arms into that cuddy opening as built. And even just going in as far as my sternum was cutting off blood flow to places I might still need in this life and meant risking crush or tear damage to the edges of the opening, so I’ll have to hire some skinny neighborhood kid if any work beyond cleaning has to be done in there, anyway.

I haven't decided yet how to seal those grommets for the bungee line that lifts the hiking straps in front and so haven't pressure tested the hatch. I'm guessing it will be splashproof but not water tight to any but light pressure, but that should be enough to keep things dry almost all the time.
 

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Can you elaborate on which part of the hatch you had to trim? It looks like maybe a little off the top and some off of the bottom corners?
 
Hey --

I remember that the major trimming was at the bottom, with some lesser amount from the top to get it to fit under the wood trim. It trimmed real easy and the hardest part of that was climbing in and out with the hatch as I got close b/c I wanted to only remove the barest minimum necc. good luck with it.
 

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