What you do not want to find

[fenixrises]

Hi all,

I have been busily working away on ol' #181.
I love the smell of resin in the morning(ha,ha).
Fiberglassing and epoxy and milled fibers and talc and grinding(what joy), sheesh what a job. And I volunteered myself for this

Anyway what you do not want to find!

This is where the aftermost port stantion base was through bolted. The inboard two bolts pass through the balsa core. Unfortunately Capy Dory did not properly seal the through deck penetrations in the balsa cored areas. Over the years this has caused much grief for owners. At the lower left a rather large crack can be seen in the gelcoat. Here the core has been crushed by overtightening. This area of the port side deck has already had about three square feet of balsa core removed and repaired from below.
[img]http://members.cox.net/fenixrises/Fenix ... emoved.jpg[/img]

I had to cut out the fiberglass on the side deck to get at the extensive water penetration. I am sure that the water froze in the winter and made a bad problem worse. The fiberglass itself, in this area, was actually delaminated. The two holes circled in red are the inboard stantion base mounting holes. The balsa in this area was compressed down to about 1/4" thickness from 1/2" and totally soaked.
The dark brown material inside the red rectangle is from a previous fix. It is something like AIREX foam. The foam was in great shape and bone dry. On the aft end of the cut out there is a seperation between the core forward and aft of the line. Probably filler between two seperate sheets of coring material. The good thing is that the seperation halted water penetration at this point.
[img]http://members.cox.net/fenixrises/Fenix ... eckRot.jpg[/img]

The work progresses. Dreaming about interior stuff and working with wood again, it doesn't itch nearly as much.

Happy sails,
Fred B.

[Bill Goldsmith]

Nice to see that FeNIX is in such good hands, and that the repairs are clearly going to be done properly. It's good that the wet core was limited to that area.

Bill

[David van den Burgh]

Fred,

Just curious to know how much of this you anticipated when you bought the boat. Is all of this coming as a surprise or were you aware of the issues?

Good luck! I enjoy following your progress.

David

[fenixrises]

Hi Bill,

The water penetration into the balsa core was found in many areas on the deck. The penetration ranged from slightly damp to soggy and rotten core and the size of the areas from small to this size.

I would recommend any owner of a boat with balsa core to very carefully check for water penetration around through bolted fittings or any screws that pierce the outer fiberglass skin. It is relatively easy to fix the problem if the water hasn't migrated too far.

If there is no water in the core but there are fasteners going through or into the core it is better to take remediative steps before water penetration occurs and it will occur sooner or later.

Considering many CDs are 20 years old or more I would say water in the balsa core is fairly common where there are fittings or fasteners.

David,

I was not surprized by the condition of this boat. From my own previous experience I am my own surveyor.
The problem areas are pretty much where I thought they would be. Some of the damage is more extensive than I originally thought but not beyond hope. The deck is not so bad that stripping the entire outer layer of fiberglass is necessary as James Baldwin had to do on Atom.

Make no mistake. This is serious repair work. It might be beyond the average boater's abilities to repair. I am fortunate to have many years of experience building and repairing fiberglass sailboats, otherwise I would not be doing this project.

Happy sails to you,
Fred B.