It's easy
Larry, When we owned our C-25 (sold it last June), we replaced the rub rail for the exact reasons you describe in your message. You can order it from Catalina Direct in Sacramento, CA. They sell it by the foot. A C-25 takes about 55 feet or so, so I imagine a C-27 will take about 5 feet more. Measure it carefully and add a couple of feet just to be safe. (Don't trust the dealer for the length...they tended to underestimate length on ours for some reason.) Ours came in at about $110 or so, including shipping. Warning - you will probably have to special order it - ours to 2.5 months! (The dealer told us it was the 'Christmas Rush' that would slow things down. I placed the order in early November and it arrived about January 10th.) Having a warm day helps, but we did ours in January. Put the length of rub rail in a 5 gallon bucket of EXTREMELY hot water with some liquid detergent in it (for lubrication purposes) and let it sit a few minutes. Have hair dryer or heat gun handy. It takes 2 people and is a lot easier if the boat is on the hard. One person puts the new rail in the aluminum track, the other person feeds and heats with the hair dryer as there is some heat/flexibilty loss when the rub rail hits the air. The feeder person is on the deck, to keep the amount of exposed rub rail to a minimum. (If you do this on a hot day, you can probably forget about using a hair dryer.) Be careful as you are feeding to keep the coil from the bucket of hot water feeding straight. A couple of notes....we found no need for a rubber mallet. The heat gun gave us the flexibility we needed to insert the rail in the track. You will have to renew the hot water every 10 minutes or so. Finally...there is a TOP and BOTTOM to the rail - the reinforcement needs to line up with the screw securing the aluminum track. Good luck! Bob Gauvreau C-36 MkII "Purrrfect", 1929
