The Holder 20 One Design Class Association

Saving Holder 20 #269

by Rod TerBeest, Fleet Captain

In Minnesota, we are in the process of building Holder 20 fleets, Matt Gundlach and I have been buying and bringing back boats to offer to interested sailors in the area. So far we have a total of 10 boats here, with more than half due to our fleet building efforts. I have a particular interest in the Holder 20 class because for 5 years I was the Class Association US Fleet Captain and was national champion in the year 2000.  The boats were first built by Vagabond boats and later by Coast Catamaran Corp. Only 275 or so of the boats were built from 1981 through 1987. The class association has records for only about 150 of the boats built. So every time we find another one it is an exciting time. The boats are scattered all over the country, racing PHRF in local fleets, used as family day sailors at cabins and many are just abandoned in boat yards and back yards. There are 4 active fleets in the country; Waconia, Minnesota; Las Vegas, Nevada; Madison Lake, Minnesota; and Lake Havasu, Arizona. In the early 80's the class was quite active but interest died out after the last boats were built. A core of owners on the West Coast managed to keep the association going. Lately interest is on the rise because of the promotional efforts of the class association.

I am always on the lookout for boats that can be put back into service. Last summer I found through Internet friends that there was a Holder 20 for sale in Jupiter, Florida for $600. The manager of a boat yard there owned it. I am not sure how he acquired the boat, but apparently it had been sitting around for a number of years and he just wanted it out of his yard and life. I was about a day late calling him, it seems he had just sold the boat to a person down in Fort Lauderdale and was waiting for him to pick it up. So life goes on.  Around the first of September, I got a call from the Fort Lauderdale buyer to see if I still wanted the boat, but for $1000, I said yes right away and arranged to Fed Ex a cashiers check as soon as I got the fax copy of the title. So we did the deal and a few days later I got the original Florida title.  I planned to make the boat sailable and saleable and add it to the local fleet here in Madison Lake.

I am a member of the Lake City Yacht Club in Lake City, Minnesota, where we race PHRF. The Lake City Yacht Club invited the Holder 20 Class Association to have the 2004 Nationals there on 4th of July weekend and we accepted the invitation. Now, normally at LCYC we sail a Ranger 22 with a rotating crew, when I polled my crew as to who would like to race in the 2004 nationals almost everyone raised their hand. I had six crew and only one racing condition Holder 20, so my fixer upper Holder 20 became a project to bring her into racing condition too.

My tow vehicle at the time was not capable of a trip to Florida, so I ask my friend Mike to help. He had just bought a new Ford van, I paid all the expenses and with my boat trailer in tow we headed south for a little time off from work and few days vacation in Fort Lauderdale. Mike and I pretty much drove straight through the 1800 miles to Florida from Minnesota, only stopping a couple of times for naps at waysides and truck stops. We took turns sleeping in the back of the van.

It just so happens I have a friend, Andi Creary, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. She arranged a motel for us and volunteered to be our tour guide. We arrived on Friday and had a day to kill before we picked up the boat on Sunday. On Saturday, we decided to run over to the self-storage yard where the boat was and take a look at her. She was there all right, a pitiful sight for a once beautiful boat, sitting on old tires on a flatbed trailer with flat tires. She was all oxidized by the sun, her hardware all bleached white, the hatch rotting away, and so much crusty old bottom paint it looked like we would need an air hammer to get it off.  No surprise, she was pretty much as expected for a 600 dollar boat. After a quick inspection, we stopped by the yard office to see if we would be able to pick up the boat on Sunday? Would the gate be open? Horrors!! for anyone buying a boat sight unseen from a stranger, the yard manager told us the storage bill had not been paid and all the person's property had all been bought by a third party to cover the charges, including my boat. The yard manager said under Florida law the boat now belonged to them.  Fortunately, I had the original Florida title for our Holder 20 and was able to get in touch with one of the new owners. We spent Sunday trying to determine who really owned it. After reviewing all my documents they relented and agreed that it was indeed my boat. They still ended up with a J105 for their investment. I paid $100 for help to get it out of the storage yard on Sunday. With luck, a little help and some balancing, we managed to get the 1100 pound boat off the flatbed and on my trailer. We didn't get all of the parts at that time, however, we were told that there was a box of parts and sails somewhere else in Florida that they would be sent to me. OK, I was just happy to get out of there with my boat. The trip home was uneventful except for problems with the trailer lights. For some reason my trailer wiring was incompatible with Mike's new Ford van. We ended up destroying the van's wiring harness and the wiring on the trailer trying to make it work. At a wayside in Georgia, and after straining my friendship with Mike to the limit, a trucker gave us a little battery operated flashing amber light that just sticks to things with double stick tape, it worked great. We didn't get stopped once.

I had 4 months to get the boat into the water and 6 months until the Nationals. One of my regular crew volunteered to skipper the new boat, but I knew he wasn’t ready to skipper and besides I needed help getting the boat restored. So I got my friend Tim Carlson to help with the restoration and to skipper the new boat with the caveat that he had to take the crew I gave him and an interest in the boat instead of cash for his labor.. Tim is a glass, paint guy, and a rigger, I am an organizer. We got her into my shop after new years, the schedule was to work 4-5 hours on Sundays until she was done. Since I don't have a hoist in my shop, I made up a couple of heavy-duty sawhorses out of 4x4s to set the boat on. We rolled the boat and trailer into the shop, put the trailer on automotive type stands, the kind you can buy at any auto supply place, to get some height. lowered the tongue all the way and slid a sawhorse under the transom.  Then raised the trailer tongue all the way and jacked the bow of the boat up until we could slide in the second sawhorse. The second sawhorse had one set of removable legs so it would go between the trailer frame and the bottom of the boat. It also had to be 10 feet long so that the trailer wheels would clear when we rolled it out.

The first couple of Sundays were spent cleaning her up, buffing out the oxidation and removing the old deck hardware. Once the power buffer got to her, she shined right up, but all of the deck hardware, halyards, and some rigging had to be replaced. Exposure to the Florida sun had taken its toll. The next job was to redo the bottom. It was winter and we were in a heated enclosed environment, the challenge before us was to remove the old bottom paint without having to grind it off. I didn’t want blue bottom paint dust all over my shop. My orbital sander does have a dust recovery system but it is not 100 percent effective. We tried using solvents, like paint thinner, but that was ineffective and dangerous to breathe in a closed shop. There are some commercial bottom paint removes but they are expensive. I went down to my local home building supply center to see if they had any strippers that could be used on fiberglass. Most of them were too toxic and too aggressive to be used on fiberglass, but 3M, a Minnesota company by the way, has a stripper called Safest and it was less than 20 dollars/gallon besides. Upon reading the label I found it could be used in a closed environment and you didn’t even need gloves to handle the product.  The label says it needs to be applied and left over night to work. I had my doubts, but for 20 dollars I thought it was worth a try. I applied a small test section near the bow, I didn’t think it could screw the boat up too badly if it didn’t work. The next morning I took a paint scrapper to the treated area and the old bottom paint came right off. The stripper works by slowly penetrating the paint and softening it, but it needs to be scraped off before it has a chance to dry again. The stripper comes out of the bottle looking like pudding. Use a brush to apply as much as will stay on the hull. You can't put too much on.  Don’t get anxious, give it the time to do the work. With the help of the crew, we cleaned up the bottom in one work session. It took 1 1/2 gallons of 3M Safest Stripper to do the job.

We faired and sanded the bottom and the keel with 80-grit sandpaper, and sprayed on a Teflon/epoxy product from Interlux called VC Underwater. After the third coat, we wet sanded the hull down to 600 grit with help of the crew again. I also had Tim put a red Boot stripe, my friend Gary Mull, once said that red was the only color for a proper yacht.

I was able to salvage only one of original Maxwell #6 winches and replaced the other one with a new Harken #6. Most of the hardware was replaced with Harken products. On the previous boat that I had re-rigged, I was able to replace the sheaves in the deck organizer, in this boat the bolts were so corroded that they had to be cut off and completely replaced with new Harken products. All of the deck cleats for the halyards were replace with
Harken camcleats on risers with extreme angle fairleads. The cockpit of a Holder 20 is not very big and the ability to work the halyards from any angle is a big advantage. The Plywood chainplates in the cabin had rotted, so they were replaced with stainless steel chainplates. This is a big problem in all Holder 20's eventually they will all have to be replaced. The main, jib and spinnaker halyards were replaced with Sampson 1/4 inch warp speed with the cover partially removed and color-coded. Removing the cover reduces friction going through the exit blocks and weight aloft. The traveler was upgraded to the Harken windward sheeting system, to get the track high enough to clear the cockpit seats we stacked the high clearance track on top of the old traveler track and bolted them together. The Harken traveler car is wider than the original car, so it has to go over the seats, rather than in the channel molded for the original equipment. The class rules do not allow you to relocate the position of the traveler. The class rules are flexible enough to allow one to modernize the boat, without compromising the one-design qualities. The class rules allow replacing the wire backstay with spectra and adding 12:1 purchase with double ends lead forward to the traveler position so either the skipper or middle crew can reach it.

Some hardware, of course, was stripped from the boat along with equipment and sails and some just could not be found as the boat made its journey through multiple owners to me. Missing were all of the sails, the sheets, the main sheet system, the boom vang system, the forestay, the wench handle, the tiller and tiller extension. After repeated calls to Florida, a box finally arrived with what I hoped to be some of the missing equipment. In the box was only an old main sail, jib, and a piece of wire I don't have any idea what it was for.

I had a mainsail, 155% genoa and spinnaker from my boat Turbulence that had some races left in it. I ordered a new 135% Pentax #2 from Quantum Sails, Tim is an aspiring sailmaker, so he made a new hundo, and an additional spinnaker at the loft he works part time at. All of the other above-mentioned parts were replaced with new.

By mid April, the boat was ready to christen and launch, but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. I say never let the weather ruin a good party, so we christened the boat Ragamuffin in the shop driveway, and retired to the deck for some refreshment. Everyone involved with the project came, even the local banker who had lent me the initial $1000 to buy the boat, the crews and wives of both boats, and members of the local Holder 20 fleet.

On the first weekend of May we were out practicing. In Minnesota, the ice is off the lakes around the 1st of April, but the water is cold well into June. We divided the crew in half, Don Pankowski and Vicki Mens sailed with me on Turbulence, and Mark Swanson and Kim Spears sailed with Tim on Ragamuffin. We practiced almost every Sunday until the Nationals July 2-4, 2004.

Well, neither boat won the regatta, but Ragamuffin tied for second at the nationals. I was very satisfied with the results of our efforts. To bring a boat back from junk to a near national championship was a very satisfying experience for me. Not just for the fact that we saved a boat from the landfill, but for by the way my friends and crew came together to fulfill a common goal. It was truly a community effort.

I bought a new galvanized trailer for Ragamuffin this fall. Hull graphics will be applied this winter. I am sure if we had not intended to race her, we could have saved a few thousand dollars. The following is the approximate budget.

        

Holder 20 #269 Restoration Budget

Boat	$1000
Travel Expenses	$600
Used Main	$500
Used 155%	$600
Used spinnaker	$200
New 135% Genoa	$1300
New 100% jib	$600
New Spinnaker	$800
Deck Hardware	$1200
Warp speed halyards	$300
Spinnaker pole	$150
Mainsheet system	$150
Boom vang system	$100
Forestay	$80
New trailer	$1100
Bottom paint	$150
Shop supplies	$200
Misc. (sheets, etc.)	$200
Stainless steel chainplates	$80
Total	$9310

This total does not include the approximate 150 man/hours of labor.

This year I am restoring a Zuma for my grandchildren.

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