New 16 Owner

[fjmatt]

Just wanted to say hi to everyone.  Im the new owner of a 1981 Compac 16. Shes going to need alot of fixing up so I look forward to getting everyones input and advice. Im going to try to post pics as I go with the restoration. Ive always loved the trditional look of the compac and am proud to have finally got my hands on one. So here goes my first question there is some major blistering going on. On the transom there are probally 10 blisters the size of half dollars, which didnt concern me too much. But I noticed yesterday on the bottom of the hull there were 3-4 blisters  1'X1' when i poked them with my knife the red acid water sprayed out with some force. Anyway, you guys think this is a good restoration project? I just ordered 3 book on fiberglass repair! Anything specific to look for? Thanks in advance for the responses!

[Potcake boy]

fjmatt,
Blisters shouldn't be much of a problem if they are only as extensive as your description suggests. Curious however was your boat kept in the water for long periods? If not, I'd start looking for some other water problems as the common form of blisters only occurs with long term submersion.
Without a background in FRP (fiberglass reinforced plastic) I would suggest West Systems. Purchase their inexpensive pamphlet on blister repair. You will find that they have pioneered an easy to follow program for the novice and have products that are easy to use.

Congrats and good luck on your new acquisition.

The only work that's not work is boat work,
Ron

[fjmatt]

Thanks for the info! As a matter of fact the boat has been out of the water for about 8 years! What should I be looking out for here?

Thanks

[Craig Weis]

Hey Hi!
Not that it matters a bunch but are we talking salt or fresh water...
As per blisters, a couple of good things going on here with Com-Pac boats...

1~No core to rot unless one counts the factory reinforcement ply wood pads to mount pulpits, stanchions, ladders, winches, and outboard motor mounts. A lot of factory wood on 16's seams to need replacing under the mast Tabernacle, births, and other bits.

2~It's just resin impregnated woven fiberglass matt and looks a lot worse then it is. Any repair will be plenty strong enough as long as the woven glass matt is not sanded away.

Sand her down till the loose blister material is cleaned off and fill with West System or similar two part epoxy, like Potcake boy said and sand smooth and paint her up. skip.

[Paul]

fjmatt:

Congratulations on your newly acquired boat.  I think you'll really like her.

I have some experience with blister repair as my 89 CP-16 had small blisters (too many to count) under the bottom paint.  Rude awakening when I attempted to remove the old paint only to find the blisters.  Anyway, it's a done job now.  One thing I learned (and it's a steep learning curve ) is "all things are connected on a boat!"  Where there is moisture in one place, it's likely to be found elsewhere as well.

My photo album is full, so I can't post any more pictures of the repairs I've made, but you will get a good idea of where to look if you visit my album.

Skip is correct about the places you'll find plywood core. I'd like to add that my entire transom is plywood cored.  I can see the print through from the inside of the boat.  (Hope you're not claustrophobic).    Also, I've drilled enough holes to know.

I found the West System booklets to be great.  The type of blister you describe is the type you want to run across, if you must.  Mine was more like pox.  So, you can treat each individual blister much more easily than the method I had to use.  Just follow the directions.  Don't cut corners.  The integrity of the hull is paramount! 

It's a labor of love.  Just keep reminding yourself of that.  When I got a little blue about all the work (which seemed to keep growing) my oldest daughter would encourage and inspire me to keep going.  It's been as much about my family as it has the boat.

Best wishes for success.  And,........take photos!!

Paul

[Potcake boy]

fjmatt,
I would be looking from the inside of the boat at this point. Eight years on Terre Firma is more than enough time for the hull to have dried, so the only way the blisters are still wet is a leak has allowed an accumulation of rain water.

Is there mold or even the smell of mold (mold may have been cleaned up in prep for sale but it's hard to get out all the smell). Especially worrysome is the transom area, which as stated by Paul is cored with plywood, and could be rotted and no longer structurally adequate for venturing to sea. You should investigate that possibility carefully. It would prudent at this point to have a marine surveyor or qualified person use a moisture meter on the boat. If you get high moisture readings then the boat has probably had persistent standing rainwater.

The extent of the damage should be determined before you even think of undertaking any repair. If it's a rotten transom or degraded glass mat in the hull it needs to be replaced. A superficial epoxy cover up is just flirting with a bigger problem down the road.

Don't be discouraged, however because all the repairs that may be needed you can do yourself if necessary and without a lot of specialized equipment, it just takes time. If you enjoy projects then it should be an interesting learning experience that will teach new skills, and you'll come to know your boat inside and out. The skills learned on this project will be valuable to you if you follow the inevitable route to a bigger boat one day, and you can do cool modifications if you wish. If you have some little guys around the house who plan to be crew on this new yacht of yours, I'm sure they would be delighted to be involved and will learn something they would never acquire in school. I can blame my Dad for my addiction stemming from his guidance in building a little pram from plywood which I promptly turned into a sailing craft after reading our family encyclopedia about the subject. The cliche is right - sailing is a way of life.

West Systems process and products as I mentioned before are a great way for the average DIYer to get predictable results. Although I've not required their help personally, I do believe the folks at West Systems - http://www.westsystem.com/ (not affiliated with West Marine who sell the products) - would be more than happy to provide technical assistance and are long time sailors and builders themselves.

P.S. - if you already own a router, it's a very good tool to remove blistered areas (at least from the outside) and give cutting depth control so you don't sand or grind a bunch of holes clear through the lay up. Less stressed areas of the lay up are generally thinner for weight savings.

Please share your experiences and lessons learned with the rest of us.

The pleasure is in the heart wheather it comes from bow spay in the face or tinkering in the yard.

Ron

[Craig Weis]

Wait one minute...a wet plywood reinforcement glassed into the backside of 20 oz woven glass matt impregnated with 5/16 of resin does not mean that the transom is un-seaworthy. It means that stress placed on the transom on the plywood reinforcing area can 'oil can' a bit. Or crack the resin at it's surface. But not structurally cause a hull failure resulting in the calapse of the transom or the loss of the stern chain plate. The glass won't rot. They called off the search for the marine glass eating worm a long time ago, as evidence proved to be un founded. Now if this construction was a 'chop gun' this would be totally different. I'd have to walk away from that construction choice. So call in an expert, put your heads together and access the project at hand and work out a solution.

For home projects in boat building West System products with a bit of a 'thickening agent' [saw dust] works super when 'stitch and glue' methods are used. Every year the Door County Maritime Museum and Lighthouse Preservation Society uses it's workshop for a boat building school who's students build a small sailing/rowing/sculling hull of some sort for the Wooden Boat Show raffle boat. skip.

[Potcake boy]

Skip,
Please state clearly when it is your opinion as opposed to generally accepted or documented information - IMHO works well for that purpose.

fjmatt,
Here is a good link concerning the problems and causes of blistering as researched by the experts. Severe water saturation is indeed a concern.
http://www.boats.com/news-reviews/articledetail.html?lid=1899

Ron

[Craig Weis]

What is IHMO ?

[Lost Lake]

IMHO = In My Humble Opinion

Sorry to butt in your argument guys, but I didn't want to leave Skip hanging.... LOL!

[Craig Weis]

Forget the smell. Don't give a rat's behind about that.

I met Chris Caswell at a Christmas party, Corinthian Yacht Club~Chicago and would never diveate from his learned knowledge. I like Chris. One heck of a wordsmith.

Tim Graul Marine Services and marine design is my neighbor and has surveyed a ton of boats, in addition his company designed the Washington Island ferries that criss cross Death's Door and barges, yachts, and the Dennis Sullivan a reproduction of a working centerboard schooner built by the State of Wisconsin as a marine training vessel for marine biology students in the UW system...in Tim's learned opinion, "...don't get too excited about a piece of rotted wood that provides a landing for a foot of a ladder." Just cut the SOB out and glass in another.  IMHO. skip.

What I did not say was...fiberglass soaks up water and gets heavier. So what? Wood does the same thing...but what fiberglass does not do is rot. The wood, which if the boat is made properly can rot and be 'carved out' best way possible and replaced because the wood glassed in is not the strength of the boat. The West System was found to be suitable for stiffening rotted and soft wood once that wood has dried down to an acceptable moisture content. Kind of cheating but not replacing...

The most likely reason wood becomes wet is a crack in the glass directing water, [BTW water is a universial solvent. Given enough time water will desolve anything. For glass let's say thousands of years], to the wood. Or the bedding compound chipped out, screws loosened up or some darn thing like that.

Walk around a boat yard in winter after a few months of being on the hard and boats like Cape Dory's, some Morgans, and Rangers always seem to have indents in the hull where the fiberglass is pushed in from the stands used to steady-up the hull. And that is not a big deal as these indents pop back out to their original shape once back in the water.  Sorry to be such an anal pore but I'm really pissed off.

[Paul]

Hey Skip,  did you read that link?  Pretty interesting.  I didn't know that an official study had been carried out.  But, I did read elsewhere of the suspected causes of blistering, including the contamination factor.  Fortunately, mine were of the Phase I type.  Just, a lot of them.

Fjmatt, hopefully, yours are also Phase I.  Less of them, but bigger.

Oh, and Skip, what did they call that outermost layer of the boat? 

Regarding the plywood:  As I understand it, the primary function is to add stiffness without the weight of "that much" solid fiberglass.  That stiffness adds some strength as well.  Maybe not the strength of solid laminate of the same thickness, but some benefit, none the less.

Paul

[Craig Weis]

Outer most layer of the boat's hull in this article was Gel Coat. However I asked Richard Hutchinson at The All Sail Boat Show in Chicago and he said," We don't use gel coat." What else can I say?

I suppose I'll be band for this site as being too much a know it all. So let me eat crow and crawl back into your good graces. I always enjoy reading anything Caswell has to say including blisters which it seams are de-laminations for any number of reasons.

Maybe it's just not my day. It's raining Thursday night and I'm on holiday Friday to go sailing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I DID MAKE MAKE SOME TAKE-A-LONG CHILLI.

Yummo! As Ms Ray would say.

My boss was highly abrasive today too. Slammed his fist clean through a key board, ripped the cord out of a CPU, flipped a table over with everybodies coffee, papers, and cells went onto the floor...don't be afraid to yell!!
Heck we are just building boats.

Oh and delivery of Tiger Wood's boat will be delayed due to the owner's schedule conflict. So the trip out of Wisconsin waters down to Indiana waters [because the owner's can pay less tax in Indiana] will be delayed one week. No big deal. More sea trials checking for noise mostly.

OK, now I feel much better as I am remembering what my old partner would say, "If a smile is going to be your umbrella, then your going to get a wet ass. This fellow don't mean nothing to you. Ain't no one shooting at you." Thanks Lieutenant. skip

Oh I forgot, our 135 foot aluminum yachts dry...weigh in at around 104 metric ton and do around 42 knots.

Our fiberglassed and expensive cored 135 foot hulls dry...weight in at around 134 metric ton and do around 32 knots. Good reason to use plywood and not fiberglass for reinforcements. A cool picture of the stern of a glass boat blocking the road is on my Frappr photos.

[Lost Lake]

Wow Skip, for being upset, you still write real well!

I have no clue what you are upset about, but it looks like dispensing some knowledge to us helped a bit. Thanks for posting so much about this subject, if I ever need boat repair I'm dragging it up to you for a look-see.

I still want to see your boat! Although by the time I finally see it I may no longer own my CP. It's sad selling my boat, I have heard the happiest times of a boat owner's life is when he buys a boat and when he sells it, but selling my boat is heartbreaking!

Plans are underway for renting a 46 foot catamaran in the BVI this winter. How I went from my 12 foot sailboat to a 46' catamaran is a blur....

[Paul]

Skip,

Regarding gel coat.  I don't know.  If the man said so, then it must be true.  I don't know what to call it now.    Maybe the 80's models were still using gel coat.  All I know is, mine blistered like crazy under a very old and thick bottom paint the previous owner (PO) placed on it.  Turned a bottom paint job into a complete re-fit.  Like I said earlier or on another thread, the learning curve is steep.  I've learned a lot about the boat and it's integrity and what to look for in a used boat, should that opportunity present itself.  Fortunately, I have enjoyed "messing about" with this boat.

Hope you have a better weekend than the work week.  Enjoy some sail time.

Paul