Looking for information about Carter 33

Good day!
I'm trying to dig up some history about the Carter 33 sailboats. I'm appearantly the only person in Norway who owns one of these boats, and I'm curious about the boat type.
The designer is Dick Carter, and the boats were popular during the 70's. My boat is from 1975 and is built at Olympic Yachts in Greece. But I think the boats also were built in UK.
Does anyone know anything about these boats, the designer and when/how they were built?
It seems some of the solutions in the design are pretty good considering they were built in the 1970's.

 

Contact Yves Tanton at Tanton Yachts in Newport, RI. http://www.tantonyachts.com/. He ran the design office for Dick Carter for a number of years. He would be the one person most likely know the history of the design.

Eric

 

Thanks for the advice!
I've recently repaired much of the boat, as one of the previous owners had ran it aground, damaging the keel joint.
http://steinsvik.blogspot.com/
I'm interested in learning more of the boat type, as I'm planning on sailing around the world with my boat starting next year.

 

Interestingly, the keel seemed to be made of 316 stainless steel. Has anyone heard of this before? Usually they are made of iron or lead..

 

I owned a Carter 33. The keel joint is a weak spot and it's probable that the joint failed all on its own. There is a fix, usually involving replacing foam floors with solid new ones.
The keel is lead. If you see stainless that is a bit strange.

 

Did you experience any perticular weaknesses I should be aware of?
I'm planning on sailing around the world for three years, starting next summer.
So far I've fixed the keel/hull joint and repaired some delaminated deck. Good to know if there are more "weak spots" on the Carter 33 boats.

Edit: The keel:

 

No other big issues. Fantastic cruiser if you like room to stretch out. I sold the boat before I sailed her but I had a lot of conversations with the previous owner. He was Steve Callahan, who wrote the book "Adrift", and who had modified the Carter so that a holing could not sink her easily. All compartments were sealed with turn buttons so as to act as air chambers.
If your keel joint cracked, check the floors for water absorbtion by drilling from above.

 

Alan, check http://steinsvik.blogspot.com/ . There you can see the problem with the keel. It looked like the glass fibre was crushed at the end of the keel, so I suspect the boat was run on ground by someone. It took about two weeks of grinding to fix it. We also removed the old transverse frames and replaced them (and added a few) with new ones made of divinycell.
I hope I never have to do something like that again. Dust everywhere!

 

The point is how much structural glass did you add on this divinycell.
Did you add some rowings along the top of new floors? Glass fibres take the loads. In place of foam there could be air without major difference in strength of keel floors.

 

We used 600 gram woven roving fiberglass mats. Two layers on top of the divinycell transverse frames. Also the entire bottom of the boat was coated with 600 g vowen roving, both on the inside and on the outside of the hull.

 

Did you add a layer of matt between layers of rowing and as first layer on the hull?
It is a normal practice, as far as I know, because rowings do not stick well to each other(rough outer surface).

 

One thing that was done to my boat was the keel root had a much larger radius as an improvement to the original design weakness. The flexing of the keel joint was what caused the leakage. You want to make sure the keel joint has been suitably beefed up beyond the original specs.
On mine, multiple layers of glass and matt were built up to increase the depth of the radius, using many stainless screws through the cloth to add an element of tensile strength. The joint was visibly much beefier. Did you do this?

 

I realize this thread is quite old, but needing advice or expertise on the exact issue described here - carter 33 keel joint, cracked hull grid. Stein I attempted to view your blog but found nothing. It sounds like you removed/replaced the entire hull grid? Our boat has cracks, parralled to keel on 2 floors, from hard grounding or hull flex from being on the hard, not sure. Researching how to proceed (having no experience with fiberglass repair of this magnitude & importance), simply grind out and refill cracks with glass/epoxy (some one suggested 5200?), or completely redo the floors? DIY is the only option, we are in rural Dominican Republic. Also, beefing up the joint like Alan mentions sounds essential. Care to describe that process?
I can provide pics for more info.
Love this boat, she has taken care of us, hoping to give her new life.