Catalina 36

[willops]

Thinking of purchasing a 1998 Catalina 36 in great condition .
The sailing I will be doing with my son will be out of Geelong and into bass strait Australia this area is open water sailing and can be very challenging, how do the Catalina's handle the heavy weather
Hope someone can assist .
Willops

[sailingfool]

Here's one experience...
EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE (tm) - Lessons Learned: Sailing to Hawaii...The First Attempt by Arnold Rowe

[jackdale]

The Catalina 36 is a very good coastal cruiser.

[RatHatDiver]

Sailingfool. That was a great read. Sorry to say. JMO. The boat and crew were not up to par for crossing the Atlantic, that go around. Willops. The Wife and I have been sail boat searching for close to a year. We seem to be coming back to the C36 more than most.
I wish we had one in our rental club fleet.

[PalmettoSailor]

Catalina 36's are designed as coastal cruisers. That said, folks have sailed them offshore from Norfolk to the BVI's which meets my definition of blue water sailing. They have also circumnavigated which I think will meet anyones defintion of bluewaters sailing. Still they were not designed for that and likely had very experienced crew and a high degree of modification/preparation for those types of trips.

Here on the Chesapeake C36's tend to have rather large overlapping genoa's (either a 150 or 135) since we have far more light air days than heavy weather. My boat requires the 1st reef in the main at about 20 kts sustained. At 25 knots we roll in some jib at 30 the second reef goes in the main or we roll them all the way up and motor. The Chesapeake is shallow so we get short period, steep chop vs. rollers. The C36 handles these condtions pretty well in my opinion nearly as comfortably as the Tartan 40 I spent 24 hours on beating into near gale conditions. I can't say any boat I've been on has been "comfortable" in these conditions but I can say I've never felt I wasn't safe in them on our C36 but my experience in winds over 30knots is pretty limited.

The SF fleet considers the above winds as normal conditions and are normally equipped with around a 110 Genoa. With their deeper water and presumably longer wave period, they probably don't get the kind of pounding we endure on the Chesapeake very often though. I would guess they spend a fair amount of time with a single reef in the main and rarely need to roll in the genny much, but don't know their reefing strategy.

Properly equipped you should be able to shift gears through about 30 knots comfortably, but I can't really offer an informed insight in wind conditions above that since our experience in winds over 25-30 knots have been brief TS passages and we've just rolled in the sails and motored to open water while they passed.

As a counterpoint to the article about the ill fated C36 trip posted above I'd ask you to Google "Lady Liberty" and "transpac" to learn about the C36 that competed in and completed the 2007 Trans Pacfic race from Cali to Hawaii.

[chuck53]

If you're thinking about the C-36, spend some time on th C-36 owners forum. Before I bought my C-34, I Spent a lot of time on the C-34 forum and learned lots that helped me in my search.
You might want to look at the 34 as well. The difference in size between the two is tiny and it has a completely different layout that suits some people better.

[RatHatDiver]

Originally Posted by chuck53

If you're thinking about the C-36, spend some time on th C-36 owners forum. Before I bought my C-34, I Spent a lot of time on the C-34 forum and learned lots that helped me in my search.
You might want to look at the 34 as well. The difference in size between the two is tiny and it has a completely different layout that suits some people better.

We are going to be looking at C-34s as well. Owners around the dock say there not much smaller than the 36 but are faster on the water. So many boats, so little time. Lyn and Larry Pardy wrote some great books on heavy weather tactics.