Catalina Owner Reviews

Serving sailors online since 1997

Review of the Catalina 38 by Don

Year built	1980
Location of boat	Dana Point, CA
The boat is sailed on	Open ocean
How the boat is used	Weekends and longer
Normal wind strength	Press here to select
Average size of crew	2-4
Liveaboard?	No
Owner bought the boat in	2001
If the clock could be turned back, would owner buy again?	Yes
Gear that's been added	Yes, everything! Re-did the bottom, LPed the mast,new sails and sheets, all pumps were up-graded, new VHF, new Universal engine and trans, dripless log shaft seal, wired for cable, new life lines, stripped and revarnished all external teak to a extremly high gloss, new head, shined and waxed the boat. Looks Brand New and moves fast!
Structural or complex improvements	Please revisit the above!
The boat's best features	The boat in general is well designed as an older IOR boat. It's still very competitive in PHRF and is rated well. It goes to weather well and points great. To me, the best points of sail are, close and broad reaches (FAST).
Problem areas in terms of design, materials, maintenance, etc.	Frank Buttler and his team at Catalina did an outstanding job redesigning the layout of this boat from the orignal Yankee version. If there were down strokes worth mentioning, it would be fuel, water and holding tankage. But again, remember, this boat was designed by the renoned House of Sparkmen
Sailing characterisitcs	Big issues would be DDW and beam reaches (A lot of rock
Motoring characterisitcs	Slow and steady at 6.0 knotts (.75 gph).
Liveability	N/A
The owner's experience in dealing with Hunter (if any)	Parts Dept. slow and hard to get a return call after leveing a voice mail.
The owner's experience with the boat dealer or broker, if any	I have found in the boating markets, sales folks will say what ever they think you want to hear (buyer be ware).
Other comments	Great bang for your boating buck! Just make sure when thinking about a boat, you look at your real needs and requirements, off shore blue water sailing or just a day on the bay!

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