Hey All:
A neighbor of mine on the pond I live has offered me a free use of a
13' Boston Whaler, if I can fix it up... I dinna know a lot about those things, but free is free. It's got a couple of cracks in the fiberglass, and gel coat, and water has seeped into the foam. Is there a way to dry them out quickly? A quick wick? I can deal with patching the fiberglass, but getting dry is the first step.Any thoughts?
Truck it to Tuscon, or some other hot dry location. Short of that, get it in a building, crank up the heat, crank down the humidity, and if confident in your glass repair skills, drill some big holes in the glass to expose more foam to air. Would have thought they'd use closed cell foam that would not soak up water (perhaps they did, but it aged into open cells? Not really sure if that's plausible.)
Or try this...which indicates that cutting away and then replacing fiberglass around the cracked area is a good thing, and perhaps the water is really trapped between delaminated skin and foam, rather than in the foam.
They did. We had a 17' Boston Whaler Nausett for 20 years. It may be that it's breaking down. I don't know what foam they used.
I've had good luck drying out wet foam cores by sealing around the cracks and using a vacuum pump. If you try this either use some sort of catch bottle in the vacuum line or plan on changing the pump oil several times.
Depends on the volume you are drying but start with 24 hours of vacuum and then check.
Cheers,
John D. Slocomb (jdslocombatgmail)
That sounds like a good idea. just use an old refrigerator compressor for your pump. Cheap and disposable.
Karl
All good suggestions, but none will actually work in this case. :)
Drying and sealing won't help if the cores have broken loose. In that case, the inner skin is cut open - large enough to dig out all the loose foam. Then a new foam core is inserted and bonded in place. Then the hole in the skin is replaced and repaired.
If the problem is extensive, free may be all it's worth.
I had thought that those boats were mainly just a big hunk of foam carved to shape and covered with glass? If so there isn't anything to break loose other then the fiberglass skin.
If this is how these boats were built, I've worked on similar boats and to be honest all you can do is drill a bunch of holes and vacuum. or drill a bunch of holes and wait for the water to run out. Whether the foam is saturated or has separated from the skin and full of water it doesn't make much difference if the problem has existed for any length of time as the water is almost everywhere and about all you can do is get as much water as possible out and seal the holes.
The guy could drill holes at say 1 ft. intervals all over the bottom of the boat. Some will drain water and some (hopefully) won't. He may find that the water is confined to a smallish area and then remove the skin and probably cut out any water soaked foam and re-skin. Or he may find water everywhere and just drain as best as he can and seal up the holes.
Cheers,
John D. Slocomb (jdslocombatgmail)
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