posted 01-10-2002 12:44 AM ET (US)        

After using the boat a few times I noticed wet spot under the boat. I eventually opened the cover and learned that under the cover there was a nice little hole approxiamtely two inches in diameter through the foam to the fiberglass. Through the hole you could see the fiberglass keel from inside the hull. The hole had about three inches of water in it and was the perfect size for sucking the water out with a shop vac.

I used the boat approximately once every two weeks for about two years and after nearly every use I would suck the water out with the shop vac. I normally would remove 2 to 3 gallons of water after a four hour boat trip. At the time, I was not part of this website and was not thinking about important topics such as wether the foam held water, but in looking back it is clear to me that water is able to flow through the foam and the foam has the ability to hold some water. In order to remove the water from the hull, you have to turn the shop vac on and off numerous times during the day. The shop vac would drain the water within the hole very quickly and after a few minutes the hole would fill up again. You could actually see the water weeping out of the foam into the hole. If you raised the front of the boat trailer, the hole would be dry in that the water would appear to flow through the foam to the back of the boat. When you lowered the boat so that the hole was the low point, the water would flow into the hole. Since water was able to flow through the foam, it is obvious that the foam is able to hold a certain amount of water. I think the amount of water the foam is able to hold is minimal in that one time I did not shop vac it after a number of uses and the water level seemed to reach a certain point, about five inches deep, and future boat uses without shop vacing did not increase the water level. Five inches of water would equate to having to pump about four gallons of water out of the foam to reduce the water level to approximately 1/2 inch deep.

One day after a good pounding in the ocean (one of those trips if you went any faster you would knock your teeth out) I noticed numerous small cracks in the bottom of the hull in about the area of the front storage locker. A further inspection of this are seemed to indicated that the hull was delaminating from the foam. Being a dedicated do it yourself boat repairman (in reality a hacker) I bought the West System resin and drilled numerous holes in the boat and injected resin into the holes in an effort to deal with the delamination problem. After pumping about 1/2 gallon of the stuff into the hull with no posative results, I got frustrated and decided to cut a section out of the bottom of the boat to see what the deal was. I put a cutoff wheel on my grinder and cut a approximately a 24 inch by 18 inch section out of the bottom of the hull right below the storage locker. I cut right through the keel of the boat. In looking in the hole that I had just cut, there was the $50 puddle of West System resin that I just injected but nothing else. There was no foam in this area. Further inspection revealed that the front three or four feet of the bow was full of foam and then there was a section the width of the boat about three three feet wide where there was no foam at all. In looking up through the cut out area, you could see the fiberglass outline of the front storage locker.

It was obvious to me that the missing foam was a manufacturing defect. It was obvious the foam had not been removed. You could see how the foam flowed into this area but it appeared that not enough was used to fill up the hull.

The missing foam area was about three to four feet from the hole where I would use the shop vac. I think to some extent water may have accumulated in the area without foam and then flowed to the shop vac hole.
Irrespective of this, I still think the foam itself in my boat was able to hold several gallons of water.

After an interesting experience of fixing fester, I bought my Outrage. In case any of you are interested, fester is currently for sale, cheap.

For you guys that that are going to cut up the whaler with a chain saw, a cutoff wheel on a grinder works great. Nice surgical way to cut a boat up.

With respect to the keel roller/bunk trailer issue I see a lot of on this site, it is obvious to me that my 16 was designed to be on a keel roller trailer. The glass in the keel area I cut out was 3/8 to a 1/2 inch thick. The glass in the rest of the bottom of the hull was thin and flexible, in some areas maybe only one or two layers thick.

Sorry for being so wordy!

posted 01-10-2002 10:26 AM ET (US)            

"You should have spoke to me before you bought that sponge, I'll have to teach you about boats one day."

With my 9 year old on board.
"Nice boat, I look forward to selling your son gas after you leave it to him in your will, good luck with it, well done."

posted 01-10-2002 11:57 AM ET (US)            

That's great information. Do you have photos of the void? Your experience and JAC's demonstrate there can be voids in Whaler hulls. Makes me wonder how often these defects occurred.

Arch,

posted 01-10-2002 04:50 PM ET (US)            

In addition to the problems mentioned above, my boat also had numerous sealed and unsealed screw holes in the deck and two areas of the hull which were damaged such that the foam was exposed. Over time, I eventually worked on all of the problem areas.

There were about 10 open screw holes in the deck, most in near the center console. There was an obvious difference in the holes that penetrated the wood supports below the deck. In the holes that penetrated the wood, the wood was rotted and the area of the foam around the wood was black. Other than being black, the foam appeared to be in relatively good condition and while damp, it was not soaked.

The holes that were not into the wood were a dirty brown color but not black like the holes into the wood. Except for one hole, the foam appeared to be damp, not soaked, and in fairly good condition. One hole appeared to have drilled through a repaired area in that there was some bondo type of material present. Below the bondo, the foam looked crushed to some extent and this area was very wet.

The two damaged areas, one was below the water line on the starboard side of the boat and the other was on the same side of the boat above the water line in the vicinity of the rub rail. The one below the water line was about four inches in diameter and still had some glass covering a portion of the damage. The upper inch or two of foam was very spongy and obviously damaged. The damaged foam would be saturated with water immediately after the boat was used and then would dry out. I dug the spongy foam out to expose what appeared to be undamage foam. The undamaged foam was slighty wet but not soaked. If you a pushed a paper towel into the good foam, the towel would be slightly damp. I did this paper towel test a number of times in that I was trying to dry the foam before repairing the area.

The foam in the second damaged area near the rub rail was in very poor condition. It appeared that this area had been damaged a long time ago and the unprotected foam was exposed the elements. The area was about the size of football. It was obvious the structure of the foam was destroyed. You could break a chuck of foam off with your hand and then crush it into a powder in your hands. If this area was exposed to water, the water would soak into the deteriorated foam like a sponge. After digging out the bad area, the foam below looked good and was slightly damp but not saturated.

I do not profess to have all of the answers regarding foam, but it is my feeling that as long as the foam is not damaged or exposed to the elements, it will remain in relatively good condition. Good foam will be slightly permiable such that a small amount of water may enter it but will not become saturated with water. If the foam becomes crushed or damaged, the integrity of the foam will be destroyed and a significant amount of water will soak into the foam.

Holes into the wood supports of the boat must be carefully sealed in that water entering these areas will rot the wood. This may or may not affect the integrity of the foam in this area.

posted 01-11-2002 07:56 AM ET (US)            

The point at which you were pumping the West epoxy into the hull and decided to hell with it all and went for the grinder...What a classic moment, and you all now you have been there before...ahh the smell of the grindert blade RIPPING through some material (fiberglass and gelcoat in this case) that it was probably never intended for... The feel of particles of solidified fiberglass resin smacking me in my unsafty goggled face (as I would have been just to curious and too impatient to know just what lay beneath that smooth creamy layer of white gelcoat)... the look on my wifes face when she comes out into the garage to see what is smelling up the house... OH YES my friends I have been there!!!

Dan

posted 01-11-2002 01:29 PM ET (US)            

I don't know...on the one hand, I tend to like the sound of Whaler's repair instructions and I do think the West System instructions are totally self serving (of course I don't blame them for that. It's business) but I also know that epoxy has it's place in the world too.

As a contractor I have to deal with all sorts of problems. I've learned to be resourceful and creative. There are always multiple solutions to any given problem. I also have to consider the costs, both of money and time. I also use epoxy in my work. It works well for many things but is expensive.

posted 01-11-2002 03:28 PM ET (US)            

I do remember another thread/post with a comment about West Systems being one-sided. The way I see it is that Whaler is in the business of building/marketing boats primarily. They don’t manufacture their supplies and have to purchase resins / epoxy, glass, etc., along with the most current information, the same as the rest of us except in bulk. Who knows…they may purchase from Gudgeon Bros. also. Whalers’ design and manufacturing processes are not unique to the industry. So in my mind to think that any boat manufacturer knows everything about a specific repair is not reasonable.

The Gudgeon Brothers are not in the boat building business, per se, but they certainly supply their products to the industry and absolutely need to understand the many complexities of specific repairs and manufacturing as it relates to materials and their uses. Understandably they have an interest in supplying a product along with directions that will produce favorable results. (And make a profit!!) It would make it exceedingly difficult to stay in business if they didn’t, wouldn’t you agree?

When you have two experts, and there is no question both are experts in their fields, with somewhat conflicting information it comes down to the individual in the end to make what they think is the best. After reading both publications along with my reasonably good abilities to repair things there is no doubt in my mind that, again for my specific repair, Whaler’s method was not only much more difficult but also more costly, more labor intensive and would not have achieved superior results. But to each his or her own, really.

posted 01-11-2002 05:34 PM ET (US)            

No need to apologize for being able to string more than one or two sentences together. Indeed, it is refreshing. The more you invest in something the more it is worth (usually).

I generally agree with you but would differ on a few points in your post above.

The Whaler Unibond process uses non-unique materials but it is a unique hull building method. Nobody else builds a hull the way Whaler does. It is, and always has been, its first and foremost trump card. Oh yes, other manufacturers build cored hulls. Some even use foam, but not the way Whaler does. I can only suspect that they know as much, if not more, about repairing their boats than anybody else.

The Gudgeon Brothers can speak and recommend on the basis of experimenting on Whalers. They own a few old Whalers themselves. Nobody is begrudging them their opinion that their's is the way to repair a Whaler, I just think there is room to disagree about whether or not it is the best way.

posted 01-11-2002 05:39 PM ET (US)         

Regarding the West system, the point I was making, based on fester's experience, one never knows how bad the situation is under the delaminated hull. When you open it up, you can see exactly what you've got, what condition the supporting underlying foam is in, and fix it right. I'm sure this is part of the "unwritten" intention in Whaler's instructions.

It's like fixing a roof. You can either "goop" on the tar and caulking from the outside surface, or you can open it up and REALLY find out what the problem is, and repair it from the REAL source of the problem. To each his own, but I prefer the more professional and thorough method.

posted 03-16-2008 10:29 AM ET (US)            

I recently purchased a 1984 18' Outrage. There is a spongy spot in the floor in the port aft corner, between the fuel tank cover and the gunnel. There are stress cracks around the perimeter of the area, and it depresses quite a bit when you step on it. My thinking is that it's not just rotted wood, but some sort of void underneath. The question of whether to simply drill a few small holes, and inject epoxy, or to cut out the entire area and repair it that way, is one I've been wrestling with since I discovered the problem.

Here's what I THINK I'm going to do. I was thinking I'd take a hole saw, maybe 2", and cut out a small section. This would be enough to determine the extent of the damage, while keeping the cosmetic and structural damage to the fiberglass floor, and the resulting repairs, small. This would be a large enough hole that, if there is a void, I could shine a small flashlight in there to get an idea of the size of it.

posted 03-18-2008 04:48 PM ET (US)            

I think you are describing a much less serious problem than what this original poster was faced with.

I’m trying to remember exactly, but I believe there are two sections, on either side of the deck, where many 18’ Outrages have developed a cosmetic “detentation” or minor cracks in the non-skid along the sides of the fuel tank cover. Last summer at a rendezvous, I had a conversation with a few folks from the site that revealed additional (information/speculation?) about the manufacturing methods which may have lead to these symmetrical spots.

In brief, the report is that Whaler used foam block “spacers” inside the hull forms as a quality control to keep a standardized form between inner and outer hull shells. These foam blocks now, 25-30 years after manufacture, have begin to show through stresses. I know I have 4 symmetrical “detentations” in my deck that coincide with the small cracks that another owner was musing about at the summer rendezvous. Neither hull had signs of abuse or hard use.

I believe jeffs22outrage wrote an article about this on www.whalercentral.com ; but again, I don’t know exactly where that information is located over there.

My suggestion to you is to try the WEST SYSTEMS method of drilling a grid of very small “injection” holes to inject epoxy to strengthen the deck and re-adhere any delamination that may have occurred between the fiberglass deck and the foam substrate. I believe that these holes can be patched with minimal cosmetic damage.

My understanding is that there is NO WOOD under the deck in the location you describe; however, I have not drilled into the area to confirm it on my hull. If you find wood from a few of the pilot holes when developing the “grid” for the WEST SYSTEM fix, you may want to re-evaluate the situation and use another epoxy product called “GIT ROT” which is designed to penetrate rotted wood. I believe the WEST SYSTEM epoxy might do just as good of a job as the GIT ROT though. Let me restate, however, that I don’t think you will find wood in this area.

I would avoid the product “GREAT STUFF” foam because I do not think it is at all what you are looking for to seal, adhere and fix your problem. This product MIGHT be applicable in non-traffic areas of the hull (such as around the fuel vent fitting from the inside of the gunwale to fill the void left from the factory installation). The product was designed to seal up cracks in your home (to keep wind out and keep your pipes from freezing in the wintertime)…not to fix a boat hull.

Good luck on your project….and congratulations on the new boat!

posted 03-18-2008 06:05 PM ET (US)            

I think you're right. Wood, even if it was rotted, wouldn't let the deck flex like this. The only reason I think it's not as simple as delamination is because the floor is not raised at all. It simply depresses when you step on it. It is clearly visible, and the stress cracks around the area clearly widen when you put weight on it. It only does it on one side. And it appears to be the entire area to the port of the tank cover, aft of the cover for where the fuel fill crosses over to the tank, and forward of the splashwell bulkhead. Well, actually, it appears to only be forward of the rear bench seat, but I can't really tell if it flexes underneath the seat as well, as I can't effectively place weight on it.