Since you are down under and far away from OEM suppliers you are forced to become creative and ultimately research products that are not exactly the same but are a reasonable substitute; they may not be 'original equipment' but you can find products of roughly the same dimension and actually designed for the same purpose.
A good start is simply finding a rub-rail channel and rubber extrusion that is made for boats manufactured in Australia. As long as the channel is roughly 1 inch wide it should still bend around the bow the same as the OEM channel. It can even be wider, as you notice earlier Catalinas had the narrow channel while newer model have the wider; it just cant be too THICK, then it would not make the bend around the bow.
You can also find extrusions that are not even made for marine applications (which will probably be cheaper), but they will function exactly the same as long as the dimensions are roughly the same.
I'd look in to what you might find that is made for construction equipment, autos, trucks, RV's (caravans), etc. You'd be surprised what you may find with Google image search. You really want to see a profile drawing of the aluminum extrusion to match up the dimensions as close as possible, then locate the rubber strip extrusion as close as you can.
The rub rail on my Boomaroo 22 ( Australian built Catalina 22 ) is very corroded, pitted and broken in parts. Getting a new one from CD shipped to Australian is not an option for me. Has anyone had the task of replacing theirs with an alternative ? I would be interested to know what was used and how it was done.
Also I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has built a forward hatch cover using ply and/or fibreglass. Thanks.
