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The Star Class website might be a good place to start. https://www.starclass.org The rigging for these boats is quite involved. They tend to have very thin, bendy masts that break if you don’t tighten the running backstays in time. Different boats may have different setups. A 1972 boat is likely to have a lot of obsolete systems that may work but which are inefficient. Harken “Magic Boxes” come to mind. Your best option might be to step the mast on a calm day and see where things logically should go.
A photo might help people identify the brand. The photos of Sun Kiss boats for sale on Yachtworld at the moment all show vangs with simple tackles – no rigid vangs. A likely supplier for rigid vangs might have been Goiot or Seldèn. Also, since it’s French, try searching using the term “hale-bas” – the French word for boom vang.
Difficult to give advice when you don’t provide the kind of boat you’re sailing or any pictures. Have you tried contacting Gary Hoyt? http://www.garryhoyt.com/id46.html
Lots of reasons for lack of power. Cylinder rings may be shot, or timing arms/cogs/wheels/cams/ whatever may be worn, resulting in things not firing in exact sequence. Find a friendly mechanic to have a look.
Answers to your questions will depend a lot on how much you want to invest in your new-to-you boat.
You may be able to find original replacement parts, but is it worth the time, effort, and cost, when newer equipment might work better and be more easily obtained? Unless you plan to race in a one-design fleet of Albacores and there are class rules about what fittings are allowed, searching out original equipment is not likely worth it.
Paint, and the effort involved is another investment issue. The original color of the boat was in the gelcoat – not paint. Forty years of UV exposure will make any gelcoat look dull, so someone painted it. Unless the painting was done to cover up a fiberglass repair, this was a big mistake. Gelcoat is much thicker and tougher than just about any paint. Though gelcoat can wear thin, or off, it can be compounded and polished over decades to bring back shine. (Think about guys with ’69 Corvettes. They’re not painted.) As you can see from the flaking you’re getting, proper preparation of the deck and hull is required in order to make the paint stick. Paint chips, scratches, flakes, and fades much more quickly than gelcoat – often in just one or two seasons. Sometimes paint is what you have to do, however. Removing the existing paint down to the gelcoat will leave a surface that is too scratched to leave alone: you will need to paint.
There are three schools of thought about paint. You are looking at the results of the first school: throw something on there as quick as you can say Home Depot. The second and third schools are more involved. Boats are subject to a lot more wear, tear, and weather and water exposure than houses. To stand up to this, polyurethane paints seem to work better than others. There are single polyurethanes, like Brightsides, that you apply right out of the can, and two-part polyurethanes, like Perfection or Awlgrip, that require careful mixing and timed applications. (Mixing the paint sets off a hardening process. If the paint doesn’t get spread before it hardens, it hardens in the mixing tray.) Preparation of the surfaces to be painted is involved and painstaking. You have to follow the directions TO THE LETTER – including temperature and humidity conditions. They require sanding, cleaning and then using a solvent wash (not acetone) to remove any possible contaminants – like wax or residue from car exhausts – before applying the paint. Since the prep is essentially the same for both types of polyurethanes, we think it worthwhile to use the two-part paint because it lasts longer. The first time we did our deck (rolled & tipped) it held up for about a dozen years before it needed re-doing. We tried one-part on a trial deck section and found it lasted about two weeks before starting to look shabby. YMMV, however. Your dinghy may not have gorillas tramping all over the deck, gybing spinnakers racing round the bouys, but you will get chafing and wear from the trailer bunks and pads, so that is something to consider. The two-part is a bit more expensive and trickier to apply, but avoiding having to go through all the prep work to re-paint every couple of years is worth it to us. Your choice.Using the rig measurement to compare boats sounds like a made-up number that has no relation to reality. For example, we only use our #3 jib (100%) when it’s blowing more than 20 or so knots, steady, and we’re headed upwind. Less wind, or on a reach, we’ll use our 150% genoa. Most of the time we use the genoa, because most of the time around here it blows less than 20 knots. How do you think the boat performs most of the time? If we were to use the 100% jib 100% of the time, we would not perform as well. Comparing us to other boats this way would make us look bad. Comparing us to other boats using the sails we (and they) actually use would provide a truer picture of real performance under sail. Why not compute SA/D based on a triple-reefed main and storm jib? Because it obviously wouldn’t provide a useful guide to performance under sail in normal conditions. Using the “reported” figures seems like it provides a more valid comparison.
So it is more likely for the boat to actually perform to the “reported” standard, since that is based on the real sail area of the boat under sail? Using the 100% foretriangle figure automatically makes fractionally rigged boats look like poor performers, which may not actually be the case.
Re-checking the form I now see what you mean. It may be that the 19.28 number is based on the reported sail area of 250 square feet, while the 16.90 number is calculated from the measurements taken from the actual spar dimensions and 100% of the foretriangle, which add up to 219.15 square feet. Drawings and pictures show that there is some overlap to the jib, so the two numbers would seem to reflect two different things. The one to use depends upon what you’re looking for. Actual practical performance based on the usual sail area of the jib and main (overlapped jib and probably some roach to the main, and so bigger, at 250 sq’) or theoretical performance based on just the triangular areas of the spars and forestay – smaller, at 219.15 sq’.
This link:https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/com-pac-23-mk-2 has both numbers the same.(Maybe they fixed it after you pointed it out?) You could also figure out the number for yourself, though it calls for more than just taking the SA and dividing it by the displacement:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail_Area-Displacement_ratio
That’s the sort of problem that raises questions. Why does it need a new shaft? Did the Owner skimp on anodes, motor home with a blade missing, or hit something? Was it a freak, one-time surprise thing, or something that could have been expected from the way he handles the boat and/or maintance? What else is wrong that this large problem is drawing your attention from? Lots of questions.
Taking a guess, a new shaft may cost around five boat units, installed. ($5000+/-) The boat will have to be hauled, the rudder may have to come off, the shaft pulled, perhaps new engine mounts since they’re in there anyway, new cutlass bearing, new shaft, maybe a new prop?, verifying the alignment, remounting the rudder… If the boat is worth making an offer on, your surveyor should have a more informed idea of shaft replacement costs.
With the boat afloat, what will you do if, when you start drilling down into the bilge for the new bolt holes, water starts coming in? The keel/hull joint may not be watertight along its whole length. Even if the pumps can keep up with it, getting the new holes wet will not be helpful.
For threading, why not match the originals? They’ve held up for 50 years. Gooping them up with epoxy is probably a good idea, as would be putting some sealant in at the keel/hull joint to make sure the water stays out.Sounds like you have a lot to think about. CNG is not going to get any easier to find. Is maintaining your current centerboard so much hassle that you’re willing to spend upwards of $2000 (US) on a stainless steel one? These guys https://metalsnet.com/stainless-steel/316-stainless/316-stainless-plate/?gclid=CjwKCAiAu8SABhAxEiwAsodSZPJ8r-g3u00refQI9ZLAAbVVk7fC30uP1OUj0JwFLvGhHTiNEpvXUhoCY3MQAvD_BwE have half-inch 316 SS sheets 2’x4’ for about $1800. Then you have to have it shaped… Friends who had a Bristol 35.5 – very similar to your boat – didn’t bother with the centerboard and simply sailed with it up. After you’ve spent all this time and money refurbishing, your boat will be worth about $0.02 more than it was before you started. Don’t forget that the reason to have a sailboat is to go sailing!
It sounds like you will need to take the actual shape of the pieces from the boat itself, and will have to wait until you can get to the boat to trace what is there now and measure the thickness of the slats. Using the “scrim” or veneer to hold the pieces in their places relative to each other does make sense, but I worry about it splitting apart if the whole assembly is glued down with the scrim side down. What if the scrim was stapled or temporarily glued on top of the slats instead of underneath them? The scrim would still hold the slats in position while they were glued directly to the fiberglass, and could be removed once the slats were solidly attached.
From photos & videos it looks like you could put in slats in a range of thicknesses and then plane or sand down the edge near the footwell so it went smoothly into the fiberglass edge of the seat. Once the edge is smooth, the height of the rest doesn’t matter much. You could also ask someone at the yard to go measure the thickness for you. You’d have to explain that they’d need to open the cockpit locker to see the end grain edge of the teak and measure that – and get a separate measurement for the wooden plate, if they can. Two mm sounds quite thin for a “plate”. It sounds more like a scrim or veneer, just to hold the slats (glued) in place so they’ll maintain their spacing on what might be a curved surface of the fiberglass cockpit seats. Keeping the slats glued to the “plate” and the plate glued to the seat may be tricky. The “plate” may end up getting ripped apart. Simply glueing the slats (carefully) to the seat individually might work better, though you’d have to work out their shapes beforehand.
