Telstar 28 Trailerable Trimaran ...good boat?

[sailingdog]

Wiseley-

It depends.. If I have the mainsail up...she goes into irons just fine... if I'm sailing under genny alone... nope.. won't go head to wind... and won't tack very well. Lee helm is a problem on some boats, but not generally on the Telstar.

The boat is a blast... and handles 7-9' waves and gusts up to 35+ just fine... as long as you've reduced sail enough.

[max-on]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

Upwind, his boat would probably trounce mine... but I could rig the race by having a 5' deep sandbar on the course...just before the finish line.

SD, now that's thinking outside the box!!

[sailingdog]

What can I say... I don't like to lose... and that's the simplest thing I could think of. his boat draws 10'.

Originally Posted by max-on

SD, now that's thinking outside the box!!

[Sailormann]

I was looking through SAIL and saw the add of the Telstar 28 Tri what was trailerable and was pretty wowed by it. I am looking for a trailerable to purchase before Christmas and it seems I have read so much about how a multi hull is considered better than a mono that I might consider the Telstar.

Well, let's start by mentioning that you can't believe everything you read ....

The first question that popped into my mind is would the "trimarans" (not sure if thats the right usage) maybe the pontoons...

the correct term here is 'training wheels'

would they break off easily while underway. Lets say I was going parallel with the waves and both pontoons happen to be on the crest of a wave at the same time and the center hull would be in the trough of the wave. If the wavers were big enough and close together like that could that potentially cause a major problem???????

It certainly has been known to happen yes.

It seems to me like that would be A LOT of weight on the joints. Did the buildbers prepare for this instance and make the boat strong enough or the boat be ale to flex or what?

Well for your sake, let's hope so !

Just something I didnt understand..

Multihulls ??? I must confess I don't understand them either

Also, I am wanting something with a nice spacious cabin and I know that the Telstar is 28' wich would help but with it being a tri, would it suffer in space when I think about the beam of the center hull? I cant seem to find the demintioins for it. Has anyone been inside one of these things?

I believe people have gone inside them - whether they went willingly or not I can't say ....

What do you think? Good boat? Sturdy? Good Liveability?

I'll recuse myself from any further comment as I am a died-in-the-wool monohull sailor. Sailing Dog has no doubt given you a glowing report and answered any questions you have. Good Luck and leave your children ashore !

[sailingdog]

Please forgive Sailormann, he's a eurocentric monohull heathen... I call things the way I see them...good, bad or ugly.

The outer hulls are generally called amas or floats... they are most definitely not pontoons.... or training wheels. The crossbeams are also often called akas. The terms ama and aka are from the Polynesian terms used for their Proas... but have been adopted for use with Trimarans.

The cabin space on a trimaran is generally a bit smaller than that of a comparable LOA monohull, since you don't have the depth of hull, since the hull is usually fairly narrow and flares to accommodate the cabin—stowage is much more limited. Also, you don't have a deep bilge to stash stuff in—the bilge on the Telstar is all of 2-3" deep. However, there is considerable stowage for relatively large, light, bulky items in the amas. Be aware that you can't get to the central ama storage area when the hulls are retracted.

IMHO, the Telstar's crossbeams are very strong, even though it is a folding system. The beams do not fold in the direction of the major stress on them—ie. the vertical plane. The Corsair folding system depends on eight bolts for the rigidity of the amas in the vertical plane.

[onremlop]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

Onremlop-

How warm was it when you were out this past weekend. We just got a sprinkling of snow here in NE today. Fortunately, my boat's been in storage since just before TS Noel came to visit.

Dang cold! We started getting some flurries. We had pulled it a couple weeks earlier to have some work done. When we took delivery of our boat in May, the nut used to lower the centerboard had galled and we had our marina replace it, however, we ran out of time and it still isn't done. Also, the starboard ama has a big silver dollar-sized chip missing out of it due to it hitting the main hull when we would extend and retrieve it. We are going to have a piece of the fiberglass that is hitting it trimmed back about a 1/2'' to prevent that.

We had to park our boat and wanted to move it before we got hit with any bad weather, so we will have to have those repairs done this spring.

We went to the St. Pete Strictly Sail show and talked a bit with Will. It was good to see him, but he was busy trying to make a living. We went over to a Corsair, 28' I think, and talked with them. It reminded me of a big hobie cat. I think the Telstar and Corsair are two totally different animals and am glad we decided on the Telstar.

We had a good sailing season and learned a great deal from some really experienced sailors. I think we averaged between 3 and 4 sails a week throughout the summer in all different kinds of conditions. We had one sail where we saw some menacing clouds coming in and my wife, the amateur weatherwoman, said we needed to head to the marina. We parked the boat, got in the car and as we drove around the lake, the winds were really kicking up and by the time we got home, it was really blowing. A couple of the J boats racing that day capsized because they didn't couldn't get in quick enough since they were sailing into the wind and we were on the opposite side sailing downwind.

[sailingdog]

Define cold.. up here, the temps today were only up to the mid-forties... last week was a good deal colder.

What other projects do you have for the boat coming up???

[onremlop]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

Define cold.. up here, the temps today were only up to the mid-forties... last week was a good deal colder.

What other projects do you have for the boat coming up???

Today's high is going to be 19. I am going to need to put some bottom paint on and have never done that, so am going to have to research what I need and what I need to do.

I want to install a battery charger and meter and am trying to figure out how to put additional speakers outside the cabin without drilling holes. Wifey is deathly afraid of any alteration of the boat. Other than that, I can't think of any alterations right now.

[sailingdog]

Onremlop-

The way I installed cockpit speakers was pretty simple, but does involve cutting two big holes in the aft end of the cockpit. You can see the speaker installation here.

On the newer boats, there seems to be a hatch on the aft end of the cockpit, and that would vastly simplify this type of installation.

Get at least a 40 amp charger, if you have a separate house bank. Otherwise a 20 amp charger should be plenty.