Survey says ... some minor delamination.

[roverhi]

Originally Posted by Clivevon

Roverhi - very helpful post thank you, but what is a "puka" ?? Couldnt find anything helpful on google..

Puka is Hawaiian for hole. Puka shell necklaces that some places give to the tourists are a shell that wears in the surf making a hole in the center so they can be easily strung into a necklace. The name refers to the hole not the shells that they are made from.

If a boat has the core extended all the way to the deck edge it should be a non starter and the builder/designer shot for such a failure prone design. Decks are almost always built with the core left out for the few inches or so at the edge where it will clamp to the hull. The core is very compressible and would almost certainly fail to seal with the compression load of the hull to deck fasteners. My 49 year old Pearson 35 has no deck rot almost certainly because the no core area at the edge extends beyond the life line stanchion bases. Nearly impossible to keep a perfect seal with the regular torquing stanchions are subjected to expecially if there is core under them.

[Fore and Aft]

Boatpoker is right about the moisture meter not having a percent reading. My moisture mtere has a scale of 1-100. I usually take a lot of readings on the deck and work out the average of what would be dry. Thats normally around the 10-15 mark and then anything over is suspect. I am not sure how accurate they are but you can find wet areas when using a moisture meter.
Cheers

[Elie]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

Good advice from Roverhi but one has to wonder about the qualifications of a surveyor who states moisture percentages from a piece of equipment that simply cannot provide percentages.

That is absolutly true, and a proof of ignorance of the part of the surveyor. Relative humidity, in best cases may represent a percentage of the saturation of the said fiberglass laminate, witch by the way is saturated with a little more then 1% of water. Bu depending of the test equipment, the result will vary greatly and the only thing that can be sait is that there is some water ingress and a possible delamination .

[boatpoker]

Moisture Meter Mythology

[drewm3i]

Is the deck soft? If so, I'd walk. I just rebuilt a boat: not fun!

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by Cfitz

Looking at buying first sailboat. 1988 Pearson
Survey says it has 30% moisture reading on 6" wide area along both side decks along gunwales...
Some minor delamination after percussion testing.

We plan on rebedding the stantions ...
Is this any major concern... we are new to boating

The rest of the boat is dry and has been noted that it is in above average condition.

Lots of ways to deal with this. This is how we fixed it.

We have a similar vintage boat that also had wet side decks. We learned that a moisture meter could be usef to locate the wet zone but that non skid and other fillers fooled the meter. We got a very good correlation however if we took down headliners and applied the meter to the inside skin. We used a hole saw to make 3 inch diameter holes in the inner skin to expose the wet core. We dug out the wet balsa and dried the void. We re-skinned the holes and then pumped in a syntactic foam mixture of expoxy and 3M micro balloons. This mix is much stronger than the original core and is forever totally waterproof. Us Composites 635 THIN resin.

See our photos for this project in my photos on this site.

Member Galleries - Cruisers & Sailing Photo Gallery

[samfreeland]

I recently cut a 38ft 1975 stripped diagonal kauri yacht in to little pieces with a skillsaw. The previous owner had some core samples in the draw that looked ok but you could pull them apart using your fingers. Their was plenty of delamination especially around the bow. And dry rot in the frame hidden away. They used resorcanel glue back in the old days that had let go long ago. I'm not really in to stripped diagonal myself especially not after seeing this one. Maybe a newer boat built this way would be OK.

[Terra Nova]

Originally Posted by Cfitz

Looking at buying first sailboat. 1988 Pearson
Survey says it has 30% moisture reading on 6" wide area along both side decks along gunwales...
Some minor delamination after percussion testing.

We plan on rebedding the stantions ...
Is this any major concern... we are new to boating

The rest of the boat is dry and has been noted that it is in above average condition.

Re-bedding the stanchions won't fix the soggy deck core or delaminating. Since the boat is otherwise in above average condition, get an estimate to repair those and use that to negotiate some discount off the agreed upon selling price.

[Time2Go]

Originally Posted by Cfitz

Looking at buying first sailboat. 1988 Pearson
Survey says it has 30% moisture reading on 6" wide area along both side decks along gunwales...
Some minor delamination after percussion testing.

We plan on rebedding the stantions ...
Is this any major concern... we are new to boating

The rest of the boat is dry and has been noted that it is in above average condition.

Have a look at
“saillife” on youtube
Fellow did a complete recore
Not what you’re facing
But you will get the idea

Cheers
Neil

[Nani Kai]

quote: "a very minimal enlargement of the drilled puka"

I was reading your post with close attention as the advice seemed spot on and knowledgeable. When I read the above sentence I immediately looked to see where you hail from and was not at all surprised to see 'Kona, Hawaii'.

I lived in Hawaii for 25 years, the last one in Kona. Hawaii is where I got the bulk of my marine experience and what a great training ground it was.

Sorry to momentarily hijack the thread but just wanted to say Aloha to a fellow Kamaaina.