Sail work:  Ullman sail loft located above Pacific Offshore rigging near Shelter Island.

Chandlery:  San Diego Marine Exchange

Gel Coat Repair/paint:  Fernando (619-559-0822).   Does great work and did repairs on my boat in this area. 

Call me if you like, with any questions...jack 6198043627

Based on past experiences on my Hylas 46-11 as well as other Hylas, I would strongly recommend NOT to attached any kind a block to the aluminum toe rail that will have substantial loads, such as downwind sail sheets. I have seen the top of the toe rail bent twice, in fairly benign conditions. They are not designed for such load.

I have also seen owners/skippers attach the boom vang to the toe rail to act as preventer. Really bad idea, if you ever dip the boom into the water, one of 2 things will happen:
- the top of the toe rail will break off (most likely scenario), or
- the boom will break at the connection with the boom vang.

Either case will seriously ruin your afternoon.

Daniel Wolff

Hi Dave, sorry for the late reply.  I took these images but had to resize them before I could upload.

As you can these have the same jaws as those found on your spinnaker and other halyards, i.e. quick-release, which allow you to lighten the load and the block can be relocated without removing the line.. They also have a very strong spring loaded block release which opens the block itself to allow removing or inserting the line without having to remove the block itself.  This means you can keep the sail powered and move the block then re-insert the line instead of having to run the line.

They are heavy duty and fully hard rubber coated to protect that beautiful paint!   

We have four which give us the entire length of the toe rail to adjust for wind angle.  We use one for the sheets or guys and one for lazy sheets if we need them.  We also use them for turn blocks if the need arises.  They are quite versatile.

We picked these up years ago  at Defender Industries I think and they ran around $125 each if memory serves.

Unfortunately I'm not sure of the brand and it's not branded on the shackles.

Hope this helps.

We just completed a sail from Seattle to San Diego last week! The weather was sunny and warm with great north winds until around Mendocino, when the winds shifted to the SE thanks to a small lower pressure system. We never saw winds much above 25 knots. If you are interested, you can see our track here: http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Anila

We ran into a number of issues along the way and need to track down some good marine service companies in the San Diego area, so I'm looking for recommendations for places to contact (or avoid) for the following work items:

1. Yanmar regular service. Also had issues burning oil and want to have that looked at. Still having issues no one can solve with throttle revving up after hot (and had no reverse when docking, not fun!).
2. Jib UV patch repair as fabric tore when the sail reverse-furled thanks to waves at one point.  The rest of the sail looks fine, but we still need to replace this UV patch and need a good repair loft.
3. Gelcoat repair for a few dings on the bow from anchor retrieval this summer.
4. SSB installer to review my installation and check antennas and signal strength. A test on the way down caused my PC to shut down, but I'm not sure if this was an inverter issue, RF leakage, or ground loop. I didn't try it again underway and haven't had a chance to try again.

We're back in Seattle until the end of the month, then will be back in San Diego in October getting ready for the Baja Ha-Ha.

Thank you Eric,
That is as I assumed but wanted to be sure.
VA is a bit of a hike for that minor mod. and in hindsight the seat mount would interrupt the outboard hoist and dome mounts.

Good luck,
Thanks again, Ken