"jds" wrote:
hi all.looked at a very nice cal 2-27 last week. one owner since new. all
records of anything ever done to the boat, and very anal about maintenence.
boat is in excellent condition for it age and very good for any age.
question: is this boat tough enough for extended coastal cruising down the
pacific coast , mexico and central america?? possibly very limited offshore
to various california islands??


Depends on how much you want to baby it. It's not such a
good design IMHO for that, a bit on the smallish side. My
concern would be that once you load it down with the load of
supplies you'll need, the stability & performance will be
poor & the stress on rig & hull in excess of it's design
parameters.

Wayne.B wrote:
Build quality is a bit on the light side. Problem areas to be on the
look out for are hull tabbings for bulheads and reinforcements, as
well as chainplates. These issues can become paricularly evident if
you spend time beating to windward in heavy seas.


That's part of what I meant by "babying it." It's not a boat
that's built for weeks on end of hard sailing, not because
it's a Cal specifically but because none of the
mass-produced mid-size racer-cruisers are.

OTOH it's a boat that sails well (in particular a much
better windward ability than heavier cruiser which will be
proclaimed as 'more suitable' by some) and if equipped &
provisioned craftily, and the cruise was planned
intelligently, could be a big success.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:07:02 -0800, jds wrote:

hi all.looked at a very nice cal 2-27 last week. one owner since new.
all records of anything ever done to the boat, and very anal about
maintenence. boat is in excellent condition for it age and very good for
any age.

question: is this boat tough enough for extended coastal cruising down
the pacific coast , mexico and central america?? possibly very limited
offshore to various california islands??

thanks for any input, good or bad. best regards, j.d.

Plenty of these boats have been used for exactly that. Personally I like
the boat a lot. I used to charter them for daysailing, and
overnights to Catalina. Of all the cruising boats in that size range they
were my favorite boat to sail.

The V-berth is small, and the settees kind of short. IIRC there's pretty
good headroom though. Try the boat on for size and see how it fits.
Don't forget room for all the gear you'll need to take cruising.

Matt O.