Hello everyone!
I'm glad I found this forum (I hope I'm posting in the right place) and hope you guys can help me out. My family has a 2000 Catalina 250 that we recently put new sails on and re-rigged with new lines since she's approaching almost 10 years old by now and made it through Hurricane Ike back in September. She is kept on Lake Conroe, TX and gets sailed a couple times a month. I did a search before posting this to see if I could find an answer, but came up with nothing. It is possible I just didn't know what to search for so I apologize if this is a repeat post.
The other day we took her out, it was blowing about 15mph with gusts a little higher in the 20 to 25 mph range. One thing I noticed is that every time a gust hit, the boat would automatically start pointing up in to the wind, no matter how hard I counter steered. It's like I wasn't even counter steering sometimes! It was really hard to keep an line, especially when we got the boat keeled over at a good angle. All of the sailing this day was done with just the main sail up, not reefed in.
Is there something I can do to help the boat steer better and keep a better line in these types of winds? My brother and I felt like the rudder just wasn't cutting it. Are there upgraded rudders for this boat?
Thanks for any pointers you guys can give me,
Paul
I'm glad I found this forum (I hope I'm posting in the right place) and hope you guys can help me out. My family has a 2000 Catalina 250 that we recently put new sails on and re-rigged with new lines since she's approaching almost 10 years old by now and made it through Hurricane Ike back in September. She is kept on Lake Conroe, TX and gets sailed a couple times a month. I did a search before posting this to see if I could find an answer, but came up with nothing. It is possible I just didn't know what to search for so I apologize if this is a repeat post.
The other day we took her out, it was blowing about 15mph with gusts a little higher in the 20 to 25 mph range. One thing I noticed is that every time a gust hit, the boat would automatically start pointing up in to the wind, no matter how hard I counter steered. It's like I wasn't even counter steering sometimes! It was really hard to keep an line, especially when we got the boat keeled over at a good angle. All of the sailing this day was done with just the main sail up, not reefed in.
Is there something I can do to help the boat steer better and keep a better line in these types of winds? My brother and I felt like the rudder just wasn't cutting it. Are there upgraded rudders for this boat?
Thanks for any pointers you guys can give me,
Paul