Serial Number Help

herefishyfishy

New Member
Howdy...I just dug out the family sunfish that was parked hull up on a dune along the Chesapeake Bay about 7 years ago. Over that time the boat became entombed in the shifting sands. After three tries I found it under 4 ft. of sand! I dug her out and she is looking OK. I have yet to weigh her, but she seems dry. I located the serial number on the transom:

AIW21926D888

It looks like this was manufactured during the Loveless & DeGarmo Alcort years. Can anyone help me shed some light on this boat? It looks like it just missed the dreaded Pearson years.

Once I can clean the boat up and get an inspection port installed, I am sure I will have more questions.

Thanks!
 
Are there any known pitfalls with this year and manufacture of Sunfish?
I wouldn't worry about this. All we could come up with are generalities. Your boat could be a cream puff or a lemon. You are on your way to finding out.
Do get back to us with questions after you have weighed the boat and run a soap bubble test for leaks.
Do you have a rig and all the other 'stuff' to make a sailboat?
 
Thanks Wavedancer...all the rigging, lines, rudder, etc. are intact. One of the pop rivets on the side trim is missing and the trim slides off at that point. All other rivets are in tact. I will clean her, weigh her, leak test her, and install an inspection port and report back. I appreciate the feedback!
 
OK, I got her cleaned up and she looks a lot better than I had hoped! She weighed in at about 147lbs. with a little water sloshing around on the inside. Once I cut the inspection port and drain out the water (about a gallon) I will be happy with the weight on her as a recreational vessel.

There are few areas of concern that I would like your input on. First is a soft spot on the bottom of the hull just forward of the cockpit on the starboard side of the boat clear towards the edge clear of the styro. block. You can make out the indention in the first picture. Is this a problem I should be concerned with?

The second picture shows chipped fiberglass on the edge of the daggerboard well. No doubt caused by excited beaching. Marine Tex this and move on?

Third last two pictures show cockpit and hull side shots of the round cracks in the gel coat that a search points out is due to the resin disk coming loose or from impact. There are two rows of three of these cracks on the hull side and just three in the cockpit. Will Marine Tex in these cracks do the trick or is there something more involved in this repair?

I have read a lot about Marine Tex and it seems like the go to for repairs on Sunfish due to its versatility. Since my repairs are limited to the hull (a few dime size nicks to the glass in addition to the issues stated above), I plan on completing them and just getting the lightly oxidized gel coat back to its former glory. Will white Marine Tex finish out to a gloss? If not, what is the recommended route for blending the repair into the existing gel coat? Pre-mixed gel coat?

Additionally, I would like to remove the scraggly pin-stripe decal. Any hints on easily removing this?

I appreciate the input! I have found the many searches and information on this forum truly helpful!
 

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You've really done some work cleaning that boat up, after being buried in sand for years! The stress on the hull from all that sand likely had some impact, as you are starting to see - but it looks really good. To the questions:

Once you put in the inspectIon port you can look, or at least try to look, at those hull irregularities from the inside and see if there is anything going on structurally or if the indentations and circular cracks are superficial. I wouldn't try any elaborate fairing as the result would likely not be an improvement. I'd address hull soft spots or indentations from the inside only, if at all. I wouldn't get radical with anything in hull-shape remediation though - I learned the hard way years back that sometimes we want to let sleeping dogs sleep, and not make things worse.

I'd try to get the moisture out of the hull completely, which would also get the weight down. There are some tricks to help, but mostly it just takes ventilation and time. I'd keep the hull out where it can get some breeze, maybe fashion a scoop into the open port(s) to encourage continual flow, and maybe even tape some black plastic garbage bag sections to get the hull hot in the sun. I'd leave it like that for several months. By sailing season next year there should be a dramatic improvement. It will work, and the result will be satisfying.

MarineTex dries to a matte finish. It won't blend to the gel coat entirely. For that you will want to use some slightly thinned gelcoat. MarineTex is just the ticket for chips, but a bit more challenging for hairline cracks. If you are mixing a little gelcoat anyway, I might use that sparingly over the hull cracks. For a boat of that age and situation, I might try that kind of modest filling and then wetsand the entire hull extensively. Where you still have those thin cracks, repeat the process and wetsand some more. You won't have a mirror shine like new gel coat but you will have a really nice hull. (I might McLube polish the finished result).

For the trunk fix, MarineTex will to the trick. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a hull leak there, by the way, so be generous. MarineTex isn't the easiest stuff to shape, and it is remarkably difficult to sand to the desired shape when dry. The trick there is to always have some small pieces of wax paper handy when you apply it. Put the MarineTex on the chipped area or whatever, put the wax paper piece over it, and smooth it all out by rubbing the MarineTex through the paper, and not directly. Once you get the shape just as you want it, leave the wax paper exactly in place, and don't touch it until it thoroughly dries - like the next day. If you do find you want to touch the MarineTex directly to smooth it or something, use a wet finger. Like touch-up paint, the more you try to fuss with it after you apply it, the worse it sometimes gets. Keep the wax paper as smooth as possible. If there is a crease in the paper, your finished patch will have that crease. Applying it smoothly makes sanding and finishing immeasurably easier.

Rub your finger around the daggerboard trunk recessed area, if is not smooth- has any sharp or jagged edges- then sand and/or fill and then maybe insert a protective pad for the board (and trunk) so it doesn't chip the trunk again or damage the board. Though the port, check out the trunk base inside the hull, especially where that chip was. You may need to fill or even fiberglass reinforce that area from the inside. This is a particularly vulnerable and pesky area when it comes to Sunfish leaks. In this case, extra care will be worthwhile.

Again, MarineTex has its limitations, especially in filling thin cracks, and thinned gelcoat wet sanded when dry sometimes gives a better result.

For the pinstripe, I'd use a hair dryer first, and if it doesn 't come right off, try goo-gone. Any residual traces of it will come off when wet-sanding the hull.
 
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Thanks minifish! I will put the inspection port in and report back on the structure
If I fill in the circular gel coat cracks with some west marine gel coat mix do you believe the cracks will
return? Sailing will not involve any fast beaching just river and bay sailing.
 
I would air test the hull before putting an inspection port in. It is just easier to seal the hull for the test without the port in. The test is easy and will tell you were the the leaks are, then put the port in. That is a Pearson hull, they were light in their day.
 
If I fill in the circular gel coat cracks with some west marine gel coat mix do you believe the cracks will
return? Sailing will not involve any fast beaching just river and bay sailing.

It depends how soft the area is. I'm guessing that since it was buried in sand there was a lot of pressure on the unsupported hull that you don't get in normal use, so I'd give it a try as is. If you continue to see problems or if it is really soft and flexing, I might try some West System epoxy with their filler additive, like their '406', to give it volume, and slather it on thickly inside the hull over the unsupported area (adjacent to the supporting stuff - foam block or whatever) inside that's contributing to the pressure that is causing the cracks. You can use some fiberglass cloth with that stuff to give it added supported. If the cracks are not in a supported area or if you end up removing crumbled or useless foam near them, you might assess whether fiberglass cloth reinforcement inside makes sense, if you can reach the area.

Keep in mind that when we get into stuff like West System materials and such, we can quickly get into spending more than a repaired hull is worth. But then again we can say that about most of these kinds of projects. It helps to have Sunfish friends, and we discover that much of the stuff is already in someone's garage.

But I'd actually be surprised if you have to do all that much extensive repair. Sunfish are often abused more than people would tend to abuse other boats '(Lasers come to mind) and if treated even reasonably carefully I wouldn't expect problems.

Remember that when doing interior fixes we want the interior area clean and dry- another reason to dry things out.
 
To air test, first find the hull vent hole, which should be on the forward cockpit wall, up high. Tape over the hole. Mix up a bucket of soapy water and get a good sized sponge. Open the deck drain plug, and exhale into it a number of times to build up pressure. Place a finger over the hole to maintain pressure. Have someone else take the sponge, get it sopping wet with the soapy water, and run it over all joints, screwholes, cracks, etc. Look for bubbles - that is your leak. If the boat is leaking badly, you will have to "inflate" the boat several times so there is always pressure in it. If you use an air compressor to pressurize the hull, don't use it at more than maybe 3-4 PSI or you can blow the seams on the boat apart.
 
sunfish I just picked up has serial 55794 of 1968 vintage (Alcort), is that correct?

Good/bad points of that era?

I love those boats. They can be light and fast. Alcort paid attention to detail - just as an example, compare the cockpit lip to later models. What I especially like is that the glass cloth they used was finer than the course heavy cloth that AMF used, with their tons of resin. The flip side is that while the rock-solid AMF were often bullet-proof, the Alcort should be babied -not slammed around. The deck and all is more fragile. Don't sit down hard on the cockpit when repositioning. But the fast, light, firm hull is worth the care. Make sure it is kept dry inside. Also, make sure you through bolt and carefully reinforce all fittings, or all you can reach. Just a bolt and washer won't be enough for supporting the block, hiking strap, and other necessities. I use part of the cut-outs from the ports as reinforcing panels. Just keep it all strong and light.

The downside is that you really do want to do a first class rudder upgrade. I would put two ports in -mid and back - for a rudder conversion and fixture support. I'd also use a mast with a halyard cleat, in that the pulley for the halyard is imprecise for keeping the upper spar snug to the mast and the deck in general doesn't need the stress.

Don't paint it. The old gel coat is part of the appeal.

There is nothing cooler in SunfishLand than an old Alcort kicking stern on the racecourse versus all those newer fancy boats.

Like I said, I love those boats. Treat it good. You are fortunate.
 
I'll take some pictures, but I think it has a few of the upgrades you mention.

You kinda make me nervous with the "fragile" statements, but I'm generally easy on things I own.
 
I will differ with Minifish2 on the "fragile" statement. There are still a bunch of 60s era Sunfish around, and it they were truly fragile, they would not have survived for well over 40 years. Most Sunfish are not treated gently, so I think they were well-built back then and designed to last. BB
 
I'll take some pictures, but I think it has a few of the upgrades you mention.

You kinda make me nervous with the "fragile" statements, but I'm generally easy on things I own.

Didn't mean to scare or offend in any way. By saying fragile I was speaking relatively. If we were to cut ports in the decks of a mid-60's Sunfish and a mid-70's one and compare the cut-out disks, we'd typically see that the '60's cut-out is much, much thinner than the '70's. For many editions, the AMF boats were like sleds. If you look at the cloth used in the hull, the '60's is much finer, much thinner. Modern boats are somewhere in the middle.

If you were picking one or the other, Alcort or AMF, for a fleet for junior lessons, you'd pick the AMF's. Those boats can take unbelievable abuse. For a really nice racing boat, I'd go with the Alcort. In my experience at least, you are much more likely to get an Alcort at close to 120 pounds than an AMF, which typically are much heavier. The Alcorts are still stiff, but they don't have the tonnage of materials in the build. The fiberglass is thinner.

If you have kids playing bumper boats and such, point them to the AMF's. Again, not to worry, just treat the Alcort as you would a Laser for best results. For my own use, and generally speaking, I'd take the Alcort over the AMF any day. In other words, you likely have a desirable boat.

In the interest of disclosure, my '66 Sunfish (that I got used) has lasted...a lot of years so far. It's a keeper. As to the AMF...that's relegated to permanent junior sailing lesson duty at the club.
 
Minifish, now you have me confused. My 77 Sunfish has an old faded decal on the cockpit front wall that reads AMF ALCORT Sunfish. Is it AMF or is it Alcort? Both, I guess. :)
 
It was made by the Alcort division of AMF, which of course was after AMF bought Alcort. It would be considered an AMF. Alcorts are from before the acquistion.

By the way, I am not so sure about AMFs being tanks. I have a 1983 that was 121 lbs. when new, and a friend had a 1983 that was 119 lbs. Both are still afloat. The former is retired from racing and is now a recreational boat used by some friends, and the latter was sailed in the recent North Americans north of Chicago.

Chris
 
By the way, I am not so sure about AMFs being tanks. I have a 1983 that was 121 lbs. when new, and a friend had a 1983 that was 119 lbs. Both are still afloat. The former is retired from racing and is now a recreational boat used by some friends, and the latter was sailed in the recent North Americans north of Chicago.

I'll add a couple more early 80's examples, anecdotally: As memory serves, a boat of similar weight and vintage (to those two) actually won the North Americans north of Chicago the previous time around, just over a decade ago; also, for years one of the lightest boat at our club (ascertained by assisting with the lifting each week) was also from that time period. That's four for four in our sample from that time-frame so far, all at about 120 pounds. Let's hold that thought and we'll revisit it shortly.

It seems I struck some nerves on both sides when I suggested that Alcort 60's boats might be, generally speaking, more fragile but also lighter than many 70's AMF boats. The observation was pretty simply based on boats I've cut into on the way to some hopeful resurrections.

Let me give a recent example. Here is the interior of an early '60's boat, viewed from the port aft of the splashguard, looking forward. The fabric is finer than in the AMF '70's, and we'll note that white strip along the keel - cloth with no resin - which was used sparsely throughout. The hull is thin but stiffer than we might expect:
insidehull.jpeg
Here is a picture looking up from the cockpit floor. Again, fine cloth and spare on the resin.
underdeck.jpeg

And the deck, which held up just fine for over 40 years. Until a hiking strap was installed, the fixtures reinforced and through-bolted, and the boat sailed for several weekends by one of the more aggressive sailors at our club. The relatively thin seating area cracked on both sides of the cockpit simply from really aggressive hiking from the strap, with the skipper well out of the boat. Unlike with later boats, generally speaking, the seating area cracked from this new stress.

deckcrack.jpeg

Anyway, that's my caution on the early '60's boats: the boats are appealing light - this one checked in at 117 pounds, with fittings - the hull is remarkably stiff, but many of them were never sailed unusually aggressively (this one didn't even have a hiking strap all these years!). If you find yourself fortunate enough to have one, you might want to favor it.

I wish I still had the port cut-outs from some '70's boats, but the point I'd illustrate is that the construction was much more robust. Now, back to those 1983 boats.

In the absence of any facts whatsoever I'm always good for an unfounded theory, so here goes: In the '70's AMF was relatively flush, and their acquisition activities - and who knows, maybe their boat construction practices, reflected that. By the early '80's the company was really having a tough time of it - they were running substantial losses, firing CEO's, selling anything they could find a buyer for (their Harley Davidson division, for example) - plus they were faced with material cost increases far greater than what they could pass through to customers - relevant to this discussion, epoxy resin inflation was running out of control - so they apparently became much more judicious in their use of materials. Maybe cheap, even. Those extra 10 pounds of resin per boat were expensive, so they were factored out. Anyway, maybe we got an interesting crop for a year or two.

We know from TV network polling that a sample size of four can pretty much call an election, and if we don't worry ourselves about stuff like selection bias (or survivorship bias, as the case may be), from our impromptu survey of four memorable boats we can extrapolate that most AMF boats in the early 80's came off the line at around 120 pounds. Further, until we get more information (the weight of that blue undated '60's boat in the concurrent thread, for example), the Alcorts of two decades earlier must have been on the lower side of that same range -- maybe a few pounds lighter. Again, based on our sample here of 'one' and 'four', we'll go ahead and give the edge on ruggedness to the early '80's boats.

Meanwhile, we can collect scale readings and observe. I'll see if I can find those fat '70's deck cut-outs and post pictures. I've probably tossed them, so maybe offer to install some ports around the club (or perhaps just offer to cut the holes) in the interest of research. Maybe we'll be onto something -- or maybe not.
 

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