[Public-list] Saturated Hull, Bilge Damage

Bill Blevins billblevins at mac.com
Mon Apr 19 20:44:09 PDT 2004


I'm in a situation... My hull is saturated! 30% plus over most of the
underwater area on a marine grade moisture meter. The topsides are in the
dry range at 8%. Sabrina will be drying out for a while. Do any of you have
experience with how long this might take? I'll take new reading next week
and compare with my pencil marks all over the hull. Very sad. :(

I've removed all of the gelcoat and finished sanding the hull this weekend.
I found about 20 areas of blistering and delaminating, each about 3-5 inches
wide, through the first layer of matt, actually found more but they seem to
be dry inside so I'm leaving them alone.

Anyway...THE BIG PROBLEM I found Saturday was that the floor of the bilge
had a big crack. When I was vacuuming out the little water that the pump
wouldn't get, I sucked up a piece of the fiberglass. Then it started! The
sandy material below was soaked and I sucked out a 5 x 12" area down to the
wooden plank below.

What is the fix for that after it's dry? How do you ever know if you have
cracks forward of the area under the engine? Do people ever cut out the
floor and battery boxes to repair? Do you think that's necessary?

Bill Blevins 
A30 Sabrina #158 






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