General :: Catalina.Out File Has Binary Data After Rotate

I manually rotated my catalina.out file, and now the file jumps to 30+Mb and when I try to view it, less tells me it might be a binary file. It sure appears to have binary data in it, about 30meg of it.

I did the rotate via a copy:
copy catalina.out to another file
cat /dev/null > catalina.out

I have tried using echo:
echo "" > catalina.out
...also with the same result.

This application isn't something I can just bounce when necessary. It kind of appears that the original file is still there - sort of. But is it not readable text anymore.

SunOS 5.10
tomcat 5.5.26 (version required by app vendor)