Heavy Boat

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newbie

New Member
My laser seems very heavy. I compared it to a few others at my local club to validate my thoughts. (Scientific comparison method: picking a few up by the back end while they sat on racks.)

The inside of my boat seem to be very wet to the touch. I'm thinking that the waterlogged fiberglass may be the cause of the extra weight. How can I dry this out? The boat used to leak from the centerboard trunk and has recently been repaired. The mast step holds water nicely.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Dave
 
I've used hair dryers sitting inside the hull via inspection ports (leave the ports open),
low humidity sunny days with the inspection ports open
inside a room with a dehumidier running to dry the hull with the ports open
 
Somone advised me (i.e. I haven't tried this myself and can't recommend it) to take a mechanic's light (incandescent bulb inside a little cage) and put that inside the hull through an inspection port.
 
Put in an inspection port, (or two) and get the boat in an indoors/controled environment, (garage). Let it sit for a week and then check it out. If the boat has been wet inside for a while and stored deck down you could end up with some deck delamination problems.
 
I had a similar problem with an old boat and put an inspection port forward of the mast and on the aft deck. Leaving the boat just to dry out did not seem to do anything so I then rigged up an old fan heater with a bit of plastic drain pipe taped to the front to blow air through the hull. Within a week or so there was a very noticeable reduction in boat weight (using the unscientific picking it up method to judge it). I tried to run the fan on a low heat setting to speed up the process but the thermal cut out kept cutting in and stopping it - running it on cold seemed to work fine though. I have tried lights inside the hull as well but I am always scared to leave them there too long in case something burns.
 
Martin Williams said:
I had a similar problem with an old boat and put an inspection port forward of the mast and on the aft deck. Leaving the boat just to dry out did not seem to do anything so I then rigged up an old fan heater with a bit of plastic drain pipe taped to the front to blow air through the hull.
Click to expand...
I've used the exhaust from a shop-vac the same way with good results. Most shop-vacs use the exhaust air to cool the motor, so the air is usually warm just by itself. On one occasion (when I was trying to warm the deck to help the expoxy in a deck-delamination repair cure last spring), I placed a small fan-heater blowing into the vacum's intake to generate some warmer air. Leaving the latter setup alone worried me, but I figured the vacum by itself was pretty safe. FWIW, I had both rigs running for many hours without a problem.

Cheers,

Geoff S.
 
mmm, when we had to fix somethin on one of our other boats, we had to dry the inside out, we used metholated spirits, (you might be able to use Acetone, but I wouldnt recomend doin that cause its highly flamable) & it got rid of the salt water as well, we left it out under the shade but on a warm day so it dried out the hull but didnt get that hot.
mmm, then after that, we used a hair drier thingy to blow hot air into the hull, drying it out further & keeping it dry durin the night.
& I wouldn't heat epoxy up much as i had a bad thing happen where it created big bubbles which i then had to pop & sand off, also if you heat epoxy it makes it runny & it looses some of its strength.
rob
 
I had the same problem and all i did was hang the boat up with the nose in the air and the transome on the ground and left it there for ages about 1 -2 months came back and was like 3-6 KG lighter then fixed where the water was getting in
 
Thanks for all of the input. After I race tonight I'll bring her home and steal the ol' lady's hair dryer.

Thanks again.

Dave
 
put an inspection port infront of the mast
and at the back

put the boat on the roof of your car, with as much space as possible between it and the roof.

if you're german, go on the autobahn and go as fast as you can

if you aren't, just drive on the highways for a while.
 
i dont think high speeds & lasers really mix as talked about in the recent post (car topping a laser) it would work in theory but i do not think your laser would like driving down a hiway at high speeds
 
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