Another picture

Posted By: Dick Seacup
Date: 6/21/08 8:00a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: mast step (Jay Levy - Indianapolis, IN 5.2 #35)

Are the bolts in there solidly? What happens if you try to tighten that bolt back down? If you take it out, is there soft/wet/rotten wood in the threads? Are the other three OK? Well, in this case "not far from me, relatively speaking" means about 2.75 hours north. If we were going up to the cottage this weekend, it'd only be a 25 minute ride. But, alas, we aren't and it isn't. The softness/wood condition are on my list of further questions for the broker, though. In looking at the rest of the pictures he sent, there are some serious dings in the lower edge of the transom where it meets the hull. The broker was up front and said they go through the gelcoat but that he doesn't believe them to be deep enough into the fiberglass to cause leakage. I wonder if fiberglass wicks water, though. A friend told me that if they're not too bad they could probably be repaired with Marine Tex and micro balloons. Here's the picture of that (no closeup); you can see them on the port side, lower edge: My list of questions, other than the step issue, includes condition of the standing rigging, running rigging (looks pretty weathered), sails (inventory and condition) and hardware (blocks, cleats, &c). I already asked about the condition of the hull and specifically the bailer areas (from reading here). He said there weren't any soft spots/blisters and the bailer areas seemed solid. The brightwork is in pretty sorry condition, finish wise, and needs to be redone. I don't mind that, but I'm not interested so much in rebuilding rotten cores and doing a bunch of fiberglass work. I might ask my wife's uncle to go look at it, as he's up at the cottage and is a sailer himself. A couple of years back when I had the sailing bug he was very encouraging and offered to drive around the state looking at boats with me.