Stingray users manual?

[joshjensen]

Hello sailors,

I have a Stingray that I have finally fixed up and hope to splash for the first time today. The rigging seems pretty solid and straight forward but as a fairly novice sailor, I was hoping to find a manual for this boat to make sure I have it set up optimally. Does such a thing exist? Or can anyone point me in the direction of a good source of Stingray specific information? The http://www.stingraycatamaran.com site is down, does anyone know if this is a permeant thing. Many thanks in advance. Cheers,

Josh

[knobblyoldjimbo]

B

[knobblyoldjimbo]

Best bet would be to take it to a local club that has cats, someone is likely to be able to help.

[joshjensen]

Thanks knobblyoldjimbo, will do.

[madboutcats]

G’day Josh there’s no real manual but we can help with setting it up, first thing we need to know is which Stingray you have, I have had both the Big rig 30ft mast and Original rig 28ft mast. The masts are fairly soft by newer cat standards so you don’t want a heap of prebend in it unless you are really light, can you also say what your total crew weight is, water/ wind conditions where you sail, it all makes a difference with the settings. You might have a heavier original rig boat which is timber deck with fibreglass hulls, you may have all timber hulls or you may have fibreglass and foam “Cherry Hulls” which are very light, you can identify these with a picture of a stingray moulded into the forward deck.

[madboutcats]

I just found your post, I think you have an original rig but you can measure the mast

[joshjensen]

Thanks for the help! There is no stingray moulded in the deck so I agree I have the older version. It is mostly just timber by the looks of it and very light. I have foam in the forward compartments and it looks like a bit of glass along the flat bottom of the aft hulls. A repair job also added some glass to the deck where the trampoline attaches and had pulled a few screws out.

I measured the mast at 27ft. I am around 90kg and my usual crew is around 80kg. We sail the Tin Can Inlet and will venture up the Great Sandy Straits which gets pretty breezy but is generally small fetch so pretty calm.

[madboutcats]

There were plenty of fast timber ones around at the same time as the Cherry hulls so I wouldn’t discount it as being heavy as that is a lighter medium to build in than the original glass hulls, being wood it will just depend wether it’s been looked after out of the weather, screws shouldn’t pull out as there is normally an aluminium strip inside the hulls to screw into, that may have corroded which means hopefully bigger screws or tap some other holes into it. Sometimes the strip was a lot of small sections of aluminium glasses in, that can break out so try not to take out all the screws out at the same time or you can lose the strips, hope that makes sense. Righting a small rig stingray is harder than a big rig which makes no sense to me, so I would suggest making sure your mast is water proof and tipping it over in the shallows near the beach for righting practice. If you have old blocks with the boat I would strongly suggest you put all the main sheet and jib blocks and sheets in a bucket for a week in with clothes washing powder and fabric softener, you will be surprised how much better they run which will lessen the chance of capsizing, rinse heaps or they will be slippery when you use them, when righting all downhaul, traveller, main and jib blocks need to be let go, 

enjoy your boat

[joshjensen]

Thanks a heap for all those tips, I'll make sure to do them all before I take it back out on the water.