Telstar 26 complete renovation and modification project

[ar99kid]

Trimaran Telstar 26 complete renovation and modification project

hello to everybody !
this will be my restauration project and maybe will take a few months ...
a few words about me and my boat . i am a new sailor and this is my first sailing boat ! i own a auto tuning and performance shop here so working in fiberglass is not a problem ,carbon fiber , welding , bending pipes , prepping and painting also . i am located in romania , europe and for this reason please bear with my english or maybe spelling the right way
bought this boat in summer 2012 as a project for this winter. this boat hasn't seen the water since 2004-2005 ... so it is in a pretty bad condition overall , but i have big plans for it !!! . during this time i was only studying a lot of future design improvements interior and exterior , different mechanism for raising the amas easier , lifting the mast , making a boat support for the trailer . things will be posted as progress .... i will build this trimaran as luxury , spacious , elegant and comfortable as possible for this kind of boat , even if this means to sacriffice a little bit of performance . i intend to make it to accomodate 4 people in 15 days cruising holidays so will be a lot of mods from the actual boat design !

well lets start ...
first of all here are some pictures of the actual boat

 

[keith66]

I know several people who have owned these & they are well regarded boats and fast.
I would be very careful about altering the way the floats fold as they are very strongly engineered & need to be! The main thing with the interior is keep it light!

 

[Steve W]

A friend of mine bought one of these on ebay a few years ago in Steinhatchee, Florida and 3 of us drove down and worked on it for a couple of weeks and then sailed it south to Pine island and did more work and then sailed it to Key west where 2 of us left and another guy flew in and they continued on to Belieze. What i can tell you is dont add weight to make it more comfortable, remove weight. I cant really comment about performance as we were overloaded with a lot of growth on the bottom for the first psrt of the trip and the sails were old, in this condition it sailed poorly. At Pine island we cleaned 4 years of growth of the bottom,built a new centerboard and other work but we were still overloaded with old sails.
I still like the boat and think it could probably sail as well as a decent monohull of the same size and vintage but only if kept light and this takes real dicipline. I slept on one of the wing berths and it was pounded unmercifully, im sure that the overloading was largely responsible but even when at anchor in Key West when it was flat calm at 5 in the mornings i would wake up to the sound of fishing boats heading out and moments latter i would be pounded, so, 4 people for 15 days sounds like overloaded to me unless you are ruthless at keeping it light,starting with the refit an then dont add a lot of crap that requires extra batteries, if you can adopt a backpackers mindset you may be ok.

Steve.

 

[ar99kid]

hey
thanks for your thoughts !
because this is my first sail i would take care of all the places where seems to be loads like amas connecting points , mast support , etc. i am more inclined to be a safe boat as i am a beginner .
regarding the weight will try to remove / replace as much as i can with lighter parts , but still rather be a slow sail but comfy . do you somehow know for example if boat is sitting in the calm water and you put let's say 100kg on the bow or stern , how much will this weight affects ? like 1cm , 2 cm ? i really didn't have this boat on the water so i don't know how "sensitive" it is ...i am asking this because i will refit everything and from my research i know this one has a poor bouiancy on the stern , so i could move some weights during the refit like battery in front , will be an inboard engine which i have the option to go a little to the bow etc . some impressions ?

 

[ar99kid]

first thing to do is cradles
because i bought the boat without trailer , i need to do a support for it . this will be able to keep the boat on flat ground and also will be made so i can put it on a trailer . i decided to make two cradles in total , in in the back and one in the front .the back one will be taller so it can support a little on the sides also , the front one will be shorter because on the tip of the boat will also be a "fork" which will keep the boat .
so made templates from the bottom of the boat and start working ...
here is the back one...
by the way because i am new to this kind of things i appreciate very much any words , opinions and suggestion for this project!
the cradles are exactly under the separating wall in the hull front and rear ... i think this is called bulkheads ? i thought that this area is stronger for supporting the boat . my cradles are not so "wide" , the rear one is about 6" and the front one is 5"... . the steel beams are rectangular pipes 4"x 2" and the strings are 3" x 1 3/4" .
here are some pics with boat sitting on them ...

 

[ar99kid]

next thing to do is working on the amas hinges .
my system looked pretty strange to me , i am not shure if this was original or not , but the amas were sitting very low when folded down . again because i don't have the trailer yet and considering the wheel fenders are usually higher , i decided to mod the hinges . also the original system didn't let the amas fold close to the main hull and this was also a problem considering the wide restriction for the roads in EU 255cm !
so target for hinges :
1. raise the amas when folded
2. get the amas under the main hull deck , but get as close as possible to hull to meet the 255 cm wide
3. when folded down , amas should not touch the corners like they do now
4. when raised , to get perfectly aligned with the hull supports for easy mounting the bolts

after i understand how they work what they need to do on some cardboard templates , i start to work on the steel ones . because i don't have yet any system for raising the amas i was using the engine cranes with good results and after 4-5 hours of spot welding , drilling , raising , bolting , get them down again etc i finally got them to work as i want them to !!! they go under , they get wide as the main hull , they touch the hull only bottom down not on the corners ... so every thing is perfect ! but this is only the right one ! i need to do the left one also ...

 

[ar99kid]

with the help of another member on a forum i end up with this design which is working perfect for my target . and here they are half finished , grinded ,rounded corners...

 

[ar99kid]

forward progress...
after finishing with the hinge system and working well , i ve started to work on the right ama. seems that in the past the deck was split from the main for some reinforcement , but when glued back together wasn't done well and cracked. plus there were some bolts cover with some fiber glass tape without proper prepping...
so started to grind everything down fiber glass , glue , putty ...everything till the original fiber glass of the boat !
here are some pics

after glued all the edge poped new stainless steel rivets one 5mm followed by two 4mm and so on . because i have a lot of carbon fiber leftovers i used them for the areas where i need the fiber to be thicker. after that was grinding again and the final two layers of fiber glass...

 

[ar99kid]

more pics

 

[ar99kid]

final layers all around the edge... looks much better and much stronger than it was . now i have a pretty straight line and flat surfaces . because of using 150 pcs of stainless steel rivets only on the inner side , being grinded till the original fiber glass , 4 layers in total of fiber , this should be very strong also

the inner side of the ama is almost finished. fiber glass putty and sand it ...

 

[ar99kid]

started on the outer side doing the same thing : grinding everything till the original fiber glass , stainless steel rivets , fiber glass putty , fiber glass 3 layers ...

 

[ar99kid]

hey Paul !!!

you have gave me some great news !!! i am really happy that you know this boat ! i hope that you can help me and teach me some things about it ! as you already know this will be a long project and also my first sailboat , my first trimaran , my first a lot of things ... for me also looking at all the rigging stuff , all the pulleys , all the lines it is making me confused . hope to see you here and i am listening of all you want to tell me ... you know this boat , you have sailed it !!!

do you remember yours father's friend name ? Leslie Cox ?

and yes , i will take care of it ! i have dreamed about owing a telstar and i will put a lot of work and soul to finish this boat !

 

[ar99kid]

also did some reinforcement to the supports . there were a lot of cracks around them so i decide to remake all the fiber glass ...
going further ...
finally everything is fiber glassed on the exterior and started with fiber glass putty. a lot of sanding , another layer of putty etc... lot of dust on everything

 

[ar99kid]

supports area ... this is on top , but there are 3-4 layers of fiber glass also in the inside

 

[ar99kid]

the deck !
i have plywood decks on the amas and they look pretty good condition . started to sand it rough because it has about 4-5 layers of different paints . i have made another hatch in a place where seems that was another one in the past and the plywood was a bit damaged from humidity. round that area i have sand it till the wood and paint it with fiber glass resin. also there were some other places with the same problem ...

on the deck for a non slip surface i was thinking about some sort of sand or grit. after doing a little bit of research i decided to use wall nut shells. here in romania i didn't find any store where i can buy it and tried to make my on grit crushing shells in a corn machine ). and here is the result ...pretty happy with it ! one sample is with 1.5 mm grit and the other one is 2 mm grit. o layer of resin followed by nut shells and after that a layer of clear gelcoat or white gelcoat .

so i have ordered some marine okoume plywood 6 mm as my other deck and made the front and rear semi decks. just to have some more strength when stepping there also ... here they are