CY Inbox Special: New Caledonia

New Caledonia

June 10, 2019

We received an interesting letter from far away. We’d like to share it:

My name is Alexandrine GOVAN, mother of a 5 years old girl and I found your contact on internet. First of all, sorry for my English, French is my mother language and I do my best with Google Translate help.

When we bought Shenanigans in 2013 to live there, the only information we have is: build in 1980 Canada, previous pavilion USA, a number C4662.

Today I am sick (rheumatoid arthritis) and our boat too (osmosis, rain water inlet…) but our project is to repair and adapt the boat to our abilities in order to continue to live there, race for fun within our lagoon (Wednesday regattas, Groupama Race, Bluescope Race, Noumea – Port Vila) and write the story of our boat.

Could you please help us to find :

1- products or ways to treat the hull while respecting environment?

2- pictures, plans, diagrams of its constructions and its races?

In our dreams we travel around the world to visit Canada where it was build.

Thank you for your time, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Alexandrine & Melody

New Caledonia Hull TestTo get an answer for Alexandrine we went to the person who knows the C&C story, Rob Mazza.

Hi John,

You can tell Alexandrine that the plans for the C&C 36 (for which I was Project Manager, by the way) can be obtained from the C&C Collection at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston. See website. Ask her to contact the Marine Museum Manager, Doug Cowie, at manager@marmuseum.ca;.

I expect the plans have already been digitized, so she can receive them as attachments to an email, for a modest fee.

She can also find information on the 36 at Sailboatdata.com, as well as the C&C Photo Album website.

Hope that helps. Alexandrine’s question on ways to “treat the hull” from what I expect is osmosis blistering leads to a pretty broad discussion. Certainly epoxy coating would be of benefit, but only if the hull has been stripped of bottom paint and allowed to dry out substantially. However, I am far from an expert in that regard.

You do receive some interesting emails from exotic locals. I had to use Google Maps to find New Caledonia. North of New Zealand and east of Australia. A long way for a C&C 36 to get to!

Rob.

Hi John,

Thank you, thanks to Robert too, that’s great news. See attached photos of my boat and a test on the hull done by a local company ‘Neptune’.

Yes New Caledonia is far from Canada and San Francisco. The letters nc of San Francisco are still there to form nc of New Caledonia.

I think about 9 months to 1 year to repear and adapt our boat as I need to go to hospital and work. A big challenge.

Sincerely,

Alexandrine

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