Hi to all,
A few months ago I acquired P499 which was in a sorry state having been left outside partialy uncovered for sometime. The boat was absolutely soaking wet when I got it and took about 3 months just to dry out. Now dry, most of the boat seems reasonably sound except for under the hog from the rear of the centreboard case back to the transom, water has obviously penetrated here big time and the ply is totaly shot for about 2" width either side of the centreline. As pictures tell a 1000 words please follow the following link if you wish to see photos of the boat & damage.
http://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa312/RICH499/If anyone has any suggestions on the best way to effect a repair I would be pleased to hear, unfortunately my skills do run to scarphing in new large peices of plywood and a profesional repair would be uneconomical. My own thoughts so far were to glue a piece of wood 2.1/2" x 5/8" either side of the hog from the self drainers back to the transom, this would then add support so I cut out the badly damaged sections of ply from the underside, then infill with small pieces of 4mm ply with epoxy filler on top which could be sanded to the hulls contours. I would then glass tape down the centreline as originaly done. I am not confident that this would give me a strong enough floor so I was then going to add a small false floor over the area that gets the helms traffic so as to spread the load.
Hope this all makes sense and apologies for the long post. Opinions welcomed.
Cheers
Rich
p.s Great to see the association taking an interest in the classic wooden boats.
