Aquarius Sail Owners

I recently pulled the beam tubes from a 20 in order to replace the (telescoping bearing) buttons, and took extra care with the bolts. I think I've done 13 of the 16, and so far one seems uncomfortably tight, maybe seized (I've never used "PB Blaster" - my weapon of choice is another penetrant called ...

Kevin:

OT, but I too have a couple of telescoping SC20s and am in the process of mechanizing the trailer expansion and contraction.

Would love to talk about what you do with yours.

Jonathan

Update for anyone remotely interested.

I spent months agonizing over how to automate this trailer. Initially I thought I'd go hydraulic because I (foolishly) thought it'd be easy to snag enough cheap used parts out of hydro shops' junkboxes to do the job, but that turned out not to be the case and ...

Yeah, it's pretty bad, alright. I've just stretched it out and am adjusting the retraction stops, and when I loosened the nut on the stop and slid it in the T-channel about an inch, I found that there was no metal left behind it - the galvanic corrosion from the bolt head had completely destroyed ...

These pictures are of someones home spun idea of how to build a telescoping trailer. This is all junk. The rollers have to be steel or aluminum.
The inner, moving beam, must be moving on rollers at all times. At the outlet of the fixed half of the telescoping system there must be a roller above ...

A couple of weeks ago a local NACRA guy showed me what he'd done on his boat - it's simple and low-risk
and I think it's worth a try. He strung a section of tubular webbing (a climbing thing) between the ends of his
fore and aft crossbeams, one on each side of the boat, on the outside of the hull ...

Figured it's time for an update. I mounted an electric winch on a chunk of 4"x4" so it was outboard
of the trailer (to port) on the (expanded) boat's centerline and just behind the mast stand. I would
have liked to put it further forward - to increase the pull angle on the gin pole, because much ...

Yeah, I understand all that - I have it worked out on my 19, understand the importance of the trapeze wire sway control, etc.
I was sloppy with it once and it cost me a mast base.

I get the advantages of using the cat trax to anchor it, but that assumes a number of luxuries unavailable to me, like ...

I really do need some guidance here, because I'm a pathetic sissyboy who's never had to deal with the realities
of a boat this big (i.e. too wide to trailer).

How do I step the mast?

This wasn't much of a challenge with the SC19; I built a gin pole that holds the (hand) winch, and winch to a ...

Jonathan,
It has been a long, long time since I put together a telescoping 20 but we always did the telescoping in the water. Floated the boat off the trailer in the collapsed configuration and then once it was floating we pulled it apart, and put the beam bolts and dolphin striker sleeve in the ...

After I fetched this monster last July from Toronto I dropped by Aquarius on the return trip, and Tom told
me that there were very few - 50 or 60, I think - of the telescoping boats built. George (the PO) kept it at
his club and didn't routinely telescope it, so he just sleeved the gap with sections ...

I'm having the very same problem as I prepare the (very old telescoping) 20 that I got last summer to get wet
out here for the first time. I initially made a very strange discovery - that the locking rollers were on a 1/4" SS
pin, and not the 3/8" that all other boats use (I can say this with some ...

Could try - but you'll probably be doing the lower one while the boat's still on its side - not the kind of thing you'd want to be struggling with from the water after the boat's upright again.

Yeah, I can see the risk in having the rudders out of control, even for a short time. In my first years cat sailing (>40 ago), I once had the boat come up with the sheets snarled and it quickly left me, heading for the nearest rocky shore. There was little risk to me - that reservoir is small and ...

Cool, thanks for the tip - it's a little counterintuitive to be taking more things apart when you're trying to get it (and yourself) back together, but I'll give it a shot. Plus, that just reminded me that I need to inventory my Avibank pin needs across various boats and get the required parts en ...