New to me Marine Trader 36 Sundeck - Questions

[DBG8492]

Made a closer higher-res view of the pic...

 

[SIBERNUT]

Stairs- buy a 3 step, transpose it for how many you need & return it. Or, you could do rise/run

 

[Comodave]

I bought some precut stringers that give me a 5’ rise. My swim platform is 5’ off the cement when the boat is in the barn. I didn’t look for anything higher but I think they had some that were higher. I got mine at Menards, it is like Home Depot here in the midwest. They have up to 14 step ones with 7” rise per step so a 14 step is just over 8’ high. Try some local lumber yards and see if they have them. Or just buy some 2x12s and make your own stringers.

 

[Blissboat]

Made a closer higher-res view of the pic...

Your MT being fiberglass, those underwater spots are likely blisters - slight delaminations. If you press something against the site and moisture appears, that's what's going on. Not terribly unusual in older fiberglass boats. They are fixable, but the work is awkward, messy and time-consuming, if you DIY. Otherwise, it's no problem at all - just takes money!

As one wag here on TF put it, blisters are not known to have sunk any boats, but they sure have sunk a lot of checkbooks. YMMV . . .

 

[DBG8492]

Your MT being fiberglass, those underwater spots are likely blisters - slight delaminations. If you press something against the site and moisture appears, that's what's going on. Not terribly unusual in older fiberglass boats. They are fixable, but the work is awkward, messy and time-consuming, if you DIY. Otherwise, it's no problem at all - just takes money!

As one wag here on TF put it, blisters are not known to have sunk any boats, but they sure have sunk a lot of checkbooks. YMMV . . .

Those don't look like blisters - they look like worms...hanging out all over the place.

Unfortunately, I'm 400 miles from the boat right now, so I can't get another (or closer) look or better pics.

But I hope you're right...

 

[Blissboat]

Those don't look like blisters - they look like worms...hanging out all over the place.

Unfortunately, I'm 400 miles from the boat right now, so I can't get another (or closer) look or better pics.

But I hope you're right...

I hope I'm right, too. Blisters we know what to do about, but if teredo worms or their cousins have evolved to bore into epoxy resin, then we're all in trouble and the market for steel boats is about to explode.

On April 1, some decades ago, the now extinct magazine Yachting & Boating Weekly published an article announcing the discovery of the polystermite, a diabolical worm that ate fiberglass: https://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/taken-for-a-april-fool-1167

Has the polyestermite's time finally come? The ocean is warming, after all . . .

 

[DBG8492]

i hope i'm right, too.

Has the polyestermite's time finally come? The ocean is warming, after all . . .

rofl

 

[DBG8492]

We're back...

Made it back to Florida early this AM and spent the night in a hotel.

We had planned in advance to do this because we have to build a 7 foot set of stairs to get ourselves and (mainly) the dogs on and off the boat while living there.

We went over this morning to unload and were greeted by a very unpleasant surprise. The riser on the ground behind our boat has two 30 AMP power outlets and both of them were taken by boats that weren't there when we left. I paid for a connection but didn't hook up before leaving because we knew we were going to be gone for a month and didn't want to take a chance on being connected to power. But in hindsight, I suppose I should have plugged a cord in and pulled it aboard because now we are without power and I have to work Monday morning.

The fear is that the yard will say, "Oh well - we will just stop charging you," rather than correct the issue and get us power.

In any case, I'm not going to unhook either other boat that's connected, even though it seems one of them isn't living aboard. In fact, he is so far away from the tower that he had to string two 30-foot cords together to reach it...

We will just use one of the 15-amp plugs on the tower to run the skilsaw necessary to build the steps and deal with the yard owners on Monday when they return to the office.

Grabbed the lumber from Home Depot (50-mile drive...) and were heading to offload when it started pouring rain so we are sitting in the room for now and will head over there later. Hopefully, we can get offloaded and get the stringers cut before we have to bail for the evening.

Life on a boat...

 

[DBG8492]

Made a closer higher-res view of the pic...

For anyone wondering...

I checked this spot today. It looks like someone glassed over a through-hull where those white things were. They were brittle and just fell off, but it looks like there's something under there. You can clearly make out a round shape. Will get another photo without the white things later.

Once we get to the point where we are pulling through-hulls, I will have to figure out what that is/was on the inside.

 

[DBG8492]

It begins...

Saturday, we hauled a load of treated lumber on top of my 2003 Ford Expedition. It was an interesting ride considering the weight. I should have gotten a pic, but I was so nervous all I could think about was driving in as straight a line as possible. Despite my nerves, we made it without incident, and yesterday we spent building stairs. It's been a while since I've built a set, but I didn't do too badly. Just need to add a handrail.

We also managed to find a power source - 50 AMP circuit that no one uses. We have a single 50 to twin 30 splitter aboard, so I just pulled a single 30 off of it. Unfortunately, the old Xantrex appears to have officially given up the ghost (more on that in a bit), so we ended up using a couple of extension cords to regular old 15 AMP plugs to run the AC units, Starlink, and my work PC. Can't run the fridge until I can get another battery charger in here - which will be next week. Luckily, there's a Dollar General about 4 miles away that sells plenty of microwave meals - and the yard has a community microwave...

The guy in the spot right next to us is on a 34-foot sailboat. He's been here quite some time doing a ton of work, and his boat looks beautiful. About a week before he was ready to splash, a storm blew through, and his mast was struck by lightning. It found ground through the glass at the jack stands and blew finger-sized holes in his hull around where each was placed. Took out all of his electronics as well. I feel awful for him, but he has insurance, and they sent a surveyor over to check the damage - hopefully, he gets his repairs and new equipment quickly.

I'm pretty sure that's probably what took out the Xantrex. It wasn't powered on when it happened, but as old as the components are in that thing, I don't think it made any difference. You can hear it clicking around in there, trying to power on, but no dice. I even tried the old "hit it hard" trick - to no avail. However, solar is still kicking, and the batteries were fully charged. I tested all the electronics, and everything worked. I just don't think we have enough solar to keep up with the fridge. Might try running it during the day when it's sunny and shutting it off at night - just until we can get another charger aboard.

The best part is that the temperature has moderated a bit. It's still hot during the middle of the day, but it's no longer Africa hot. And overnight, it drops into the 70s.

This week, we start by tearing out all the stuff we know we neither want nor need and start surveying and prepping for the great Black Water System Replacement followed by The Cleaning of the Bilges and The Pulling of the Through Hulls.

 

[DBG8492]

How do I remove this window?

Is this something I need to do from the inside?

Thought I could pop it out from the outside, but now that I look more closely, I'm not so sure and I'd rather not break it beyond repair - it's one of the only windows I'm certain does not leak...

I tried removing the interior trim, but there are no screw bungs on the inside. I used a multi-tool to get some separation between the trim and the interior wood and I can see the screws - but they come from the *outside* into the wood - not the other way around...

 

[DBG8492]

Is this something I need to do from the inside?

Thought I could pop it out from the outside, but now that I look more closely, I'm not so sure and I'd rather not break it beyond repair - it's one of the only windows I'm certain does not leak...

I tried removing the interior trim, but there are no screw bungs on the inside. I used a multi-tool to get some separation between the trim and the interior wood and I can see the screws - but they come from the *outside* into the wood - not the other way around...

For anyone wondering...

There are two rubber seals on the outside edge of the window frame - one holds the glass and the other doesn't actually hold anything - it covers a bunch of screws that hold the frame to the body of the boat.

Remove this outermost seal to expose the screws, then unscrew all of them and hope to god that whoever bedded the window did NOT use 5200. I had to use a multi-tool with an offset saw blade to cut whatever adhesive was used on the top and part of the sides, after which it was pretty easy to pry the top loose and leverage the rest of the frame out.

I was shocked that there wasn't any rotten wood in there considering how much is leaking from the flybridge lazarettes.

We installed a window unit in that opening and will have to re-do the finish once we are back in the water and ready to reinstall the window. I gimped it up pretty badly with the muti-tool...

 

[Delta Riverat]

Nice looking set of stairs ya got there DBG, good work!

 

[Comodave]

Nice looking set of stairs ya got there DBG, good work!

We have a set like that for the winter storage in the barn. They sure are nicer than using a ladder. And our dog can come with us throughout the winter while we work on the boat. He hates being left at home alone.

 

[DBG8492]

We have a set like that for the winter storage in the barn. They sure are nicer than using a ladder. And our dog can come with us throughout the winter while we work on the boat. He hates being left at home alone.

Yep - that's exactly why we had to build them... We have two dogs who unfortunately haven't learned how to climb ladders.

They aren't too shabby either considering I haven't built a set of free-standing stairs in a very long time.

Put the handrail on them today. Was supposed to be yesterday but Home Depot is a 100-mile round trip and we were halfway back when a crappy Ford plastic T-Connector in a heater hose ruptured and sprayed coolant all over the engine compartment and Hwy 78 near Lakeport. Took USAA about three hours to get a tow truck to us - they took us as far as a (closed) shop in Clewiston where we walked to AutoZone and bought a basic T, some new hose, clamps, and two gallons of concentrated coolant. Walked back, did the needful, and managed to get back to the boat right around nightfall.

So all Saturday projects were postponed until today. Of course, I didn't get to all of them but that's life on a boat.

 

[Comodave]

Working on the boat never goes as planned. Friday I was going to remove the props. Or maybe not…. After bending the 3/8” steel plate prop puller I decided to step back and try a new approach. Now I am using a corrosion buster everyday along with heating the props and tapping with a hammer hoping to break the bond loose. Tomorrow I will have to try to order a new prop puller. Hopefully by the time the puller gets here I will have succeeded in breaking the corrosion loose.

 

[DBG8492]

Ouch.

That's something I've wondered about every time I walk past my prop and look at the two nuts holding it on.

Will probably ask the yard to do that - and replace the cutlass bearing. There is zero play in it, but we may as well go ahead and do it and know it's new.

I don't think I will go so far as to have the prop tuned, but it does need a very thorough cleaning.

 

[DBG8492]

Prop Guard (?) Potentially a Very Bad Problem

So yesterday doing a closer inspection of the hull, we found what looked like a small crack in the surface of the gelcoat around the cutlass bearing housing (not sure what it's actually called).

I grabbed a screwdriver to begin probing it and found what you see in the first pic below.

As you can see, several layers of glass cloth and fiber were either gone, or were missing since it was built - not sure which. In any case, water had made its way into this crack. Another quick search showed another point on the other side with what appeared to be the same story - the second pic below.

The entire arm that goes from the keel to the bottom of the rudder feels quite solid - however, I saw another boat in the yard with that same setup, but their arm/guard was exposed - it's a solid chunk of steel, and it appears to be bolted to the bottom of the keel at the attachment point.

So I went back and looked and in the second hole, I can see what appears to my eye to be rusted metal. I can't get a good pic of it because the hole is too small.

So my question is: Does anyone know if MT did this? Would that arm/guard be a solid chunk of steel bolted to the keel and then covered in glass?

Because if that's the case, I will need to cut/grind away all the glass in that area on both sides to see how far the corrosion goes and how bad it is - and dry it out before attempting to repair it. My hope is that the issue was only in the top layer of glass and didn't go that far because I'm afraid if it's any more extensive, it may be impossible to repair.

 

[CharlieO.]

Mine is steel covered in glass.

Nothing is impossible to repair.

 

[Blissboat]

Nothing is impossible to repair.

Yep. All it takes is money.

 

[DBG8492]

Mine is steel covered in glass.

Nothing is impossible to repair.

That's actually good to know - thanks.

I guess I need to go after it with a multi tool and see just how far the problem goes...

 

[DBG8492]

Decks - Cored or...?

So were the decks on these boats cored or not?

I know the walls are only glassed on the outside - but I thought the decks were cored.

This morning, I'm looking in the anchor locker because I know the decks are wet up top, and it looks like plywood underneath. Pulled away some of the headliner in the v-berth because I'm going to replace it anyway and found it appears to be just wood as well.

 

[DBG8492]

The Xantrex is gone...

Today I pulled the Xantrex out. It was shockingly easy because it was wired in the simplest manner possible.

Shore power > Xantrex > 120 Volt Bus

All I had to do was disco the 12 Volt outputs, disco the shore power input and 120 outputs, and then butt-connect those two.

Before anyone gets all gimped up about the butt connectors - No, they will not be staying - it's a temporary fix to get us away from living on two extension cords and dependent on solar alone to charge the two house batteries. I did use heat shrink on the connections, but no, they aren't permanent.

Now we have 30 amps of shore power, all the 120V outlets work, and we were able to add a full-time battery charger (Victron IP 67 25 amp). We left one of the AC units running off an extension cord because I don't want to even come close to overloading the shore power circuit. The yard says they're 30 amp, but a tester says they're actually 20. And with the one AC compressor running, the charger, and all my computer gear on them, it pulls about 12 amps.

I've also managed to pull the swim platform off, and my fiancé has sanded about 60% of the hull above the waterline - including getting about 10 coats of white paint off the wood rub rails. We're going to have to remove ALL the bottom paint and will, therefore, probably end up using pull scrapers to do it because I can't afford to have it blasted and have no interest in sanding that much paint off. There's a woman in the yard who does scraping, sanding, and painting for $30 an hour - I've seen her work and she's a machine - so we may pay her to help and just get it knocked out.

We have some holiday travel coming and will probably put off redoing the black water and cleaning the bilges until after that - but it's on the list before pulling all the through-hulls and seacocks.

Gotta figure out what I'm going to do about my diesel tanks. I know they're full of gunge - I can see it in the Racors. But both tanks are over half full, and I have nowhere to pump it... I wanted to install a separate polishing system so I may do that just to get the gunge out and then not put any more in it - try to run them nearly dry so I can pump one tank into the other, clean the emtpy one, polish it back into the now clean tank and then clean the other... IDK.

I've also found rotten wood in the cabin in six or seven places - mostly under windows - so all that will need to be torn out and replaced. Thought about just injecting resin into it, but I don't really trust that on areas this large. The fun part will be replacing the wood under the main windshields...can't wait.

 

[Comodave]

Agree, you never want to pull 30 amps through an L5-30 connector for any lehgth of time. They really do Do well over 24 amps for any length of time.

 

[DBG8492]

Sanding Sucks...

...but it must be done.

We began sanding a couple of weeks ago - what we figured would be limited to light surface sanding with 400-grit, but it turned out to be something different.

The Admiral began sanding the starboard side while I was at work. Everything looked good at first, but within days of her initial efforts, stains and spots began to appear on the surface. Tan to brown stains and small, darker brown spots began to form in and around sanded areas. In those spots where she'd sanded harder to try to fair a nick or scratch, it was worse.

We noted these areas but weren't sure of the cause, so she continued to the port side. The areas on the starboard side didn't get any better - they got worse. And they began to bloom on the port side as well.

As an experiment, we sanded a few isolated areas with these spots and stains down to the lowest point - which appeared to be an off-white primer coat just over the top of a dark blue color - which I assumed was gelcoat but could have been some sort of sealer because it was VERY thin and below it was nothing but raw glass.

We left these areas for a few days, and the stains didn't appear on any of them. So the assumption is that something was amiss in a layer of paint somewhere. Either moisture had made its way into the paint, or someone had used a coating that wasn't compatible with one underneath. In any case, the reality was that we were going to have to take everything down to this "primer" coating - a difficult task with a random-orbit sander, even with 60-grit paper.

I started looking for a faster way and found that Dewalt makes a 5" rotary sander that can run up to 3700 RPM. This one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007KZB2GE?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

The reviews seemed good and for $99, it seemed worth it to try.

It works - very well. With 80-grit paper and a steady hand, you can take off layers of paint in seconds. The learning curve is a bit steep, however, and there are many gouges on the surface of the hull to prove it. I did try 120-grit paper, but it just didn't have the bite and would gouge just as badly, so I stuck with the 80.

Managed to get the entire port side sanded all the way to primer on Saturday.

On Sunday, the shop vac was full of sanding dust, and I found that we were out of bags, so I stopped - just after discovering that there was bad glass under the port rub rail mount. As soon as I touched it with the sander, it let out a spray of water. So I took an awl and began poking at the area all along the bottom of the rail to see how bad it was. Then I checked all three of the others as well.

In the end, there's a section of glass about two feet long under the lower port side rail that's bad. I let it dry overnight and went after it yesterday with a couple of screwdrivers. The rail mounts are cored - there's wood in there - and as luck would have it, most of it is still dry. Only the edge was rotten. The rest of the rail mounts are solid as rock.

We are leaving town tomorrow to head north to get hitched and go on a ten-day honeymoon, so I will leave it to the elements to hopefully dry out as much as possible. Even when we get back, it will have plenty of time to dry as we finish sanding everything out. My hope is that when we're ready, I can go after it with a grinder and bevel it enough to fill the void with thickened epoxy, sand it, fair it, and then prime and paint it with everything else.

I will post pics and document the repair work.

 

[DBG8492]

This is depressing...

About a month or so ago, I found a couple of issues with the FRP below the waterline - both near the shaft log on the keel just forward of the prop. One was on the port side, and one on the starboard. They were holes - small ones about the size of a dime - and both were leaking brown fluid. However, the fluid didn't smell like vinegar. I chipped away at both of them a bit, and they enlarged, but prodding around inside felt like good solid plastic, so I left them alone for the time being.

Later, when sanding the hull above the waterline, I started having issues with brown spots and stains developing around where we were sanding. We would sand one day, and then the next morning, there would be brown stains and brown liquid spots around and inside the sanded areas. None of these smelled like vinegar either - and we were only surface sanding - taking off roughly the last layer or two of paint to rough it up for new primer. Thinking it may be just dirt getting caught in dew and drying, I tried washing some areas to see if that would help - but still the stains and spots would appear.

About this same time, I checked the holes near the keel. Both were leaking water and there was a considerable amount of liquid mixed with rust coming from beneath the prop guard and covering the ground beneath.

Confronted with all this, I decided to buy a moisture meter - despite everything I read claiming they were error-prone. It's not a $500 setup, just something from Amazon for $50 or whatever. I just wanted to see what I could see.

When it arrived, I started by testing both sides of the hull above the waterline. Most places read anywhere from 8 to 10 percent when set to "wall" - which is for concrete and stucco. There were a few where it went up above 20, but very few. On a whim, I started testing below the waterline. The results were astoundingly different. Pretty much every spot I checked below the waterline was over 40%. I was perplexed by this and thinking there was no way it was that bad, so I started walking around the yard and testing the hulls of other boats to try to get some sort of baseline. I found that nearly all of them were at 8 to 10 with the only notable exception being a 90s model Carver that had the **** kicked out of her by Ian - hers read in the 50s.

I read online that bottom paint contains lots of metals, so that will throw off the meter, and I knew that if I tested the steel rudder on mine, it came back at 50%, so I figured there may be some truth to that. However, all of the other boats I tested also had bottom paint. So I pulled out my sander and ground ten places on my hull below the waterline down to FRP and tested again - same results - over 40% in each. So I borrowed a resin mallet from another boater and sounded everywhere. The only places that came back as problem areas were the two areas where there were holes in the keel. Everything else sounded quite solid. I read somewhere else to test with the meter from the inside, so I went around and tested the spots I could reach from the bilge or behind things - the results were the same.

So the new reality we are operating in is that our hull is wet - very wet. The other side of that piece of reality is that this is now very much our boat, and we're stuck regardless.

After a week of being depressed about the whole affair, I decided that the best plan would be to dry her out as much as possible and the only way to do that is to take the bottom back to FRP and let it sit, washing it down with fresh water every few days to try to draw out the salt and liquid styrene. We aren't planning to splash until May, so we have until then for it to dry as much as possible. So I put on a Tyvek bunny suit, donned goggles, gloves, and a respirator, and went after the bottom paint with my Dewalt "finger of God" sander and some 60-grit paper. It took six hours total, but I was able to clear an area of about 10 x 10 feet starting at the starboard bow. See the pic below.

Bear in mind that this is all the way to the FRP. I'm guessing those dark spots are liquid as they test higher on the meter than the areas around them. So my question is - Will they dry out faster/better if I drill say a quarter-inch hole about a quarter-inch deep in each one?

Also note that as of Saturday afternoon, the area closest to the bow and highest on the waterline was testing at just over 30% on the meter. Today, it tested at 26%. I hope that is a sign of things to come, although I'm sure that thanks to gravity, the lower you get, the longer it will take.

 

[Comodave]

Not sure what will be the best method but maybe do the sanding and then tent from the waterline down to the ground. Put plastic on the ground too. Then put a dehumidifier inside the tent draining outside of the tent to help dry it out. Whatever you do when it is dry before you do bottom paint put an epoxy barrier coat on first to help keep the moisture out in the future l

 

[DBG8492]

Yeah

I think the best method would be to haul it in a desert - but we're pretty far away from one of those.

I read that if you spray it with fresh water, osmosis will try to achieve balance by mixing water and chemicals until equilibrium is reached on both sides of the plastic. And if you keep rinsing it, eventually, both sides will just be water, and this will speed up the process because the salt/styrene doesn't dry - only the water.

However, the downside is that this process can take months - or years.

We are here until May, so we're going to keep rinsing every couple of days, and then if she's dry enough, we will coat with thinned epoxy, fair it out, and cover with an epoxy barrier coat followed by bottom paint.

If it isn't dry, we will coat her with some kind of paint, splash her, and head to our summer destination where we will strip off the paint again and try to let it finish drying over the summer. It will be a long trip, but I don't think a short stint in the water will do that much damage. I certainly don't see it going all the way back to where it was.

But who knows?

Only thing I can do is wait and see.

Like I said, she's our boat now - no matter what, LOL

 

[Comodave]

We lived in Tucson for 30 years and in the winter it was mostly around 7% humidity. Truck it there…

 

[psneeld]

Yeah

I think the best method would be to haul it in a desert - but we're pretty far away from one of those.

I read that if you spray it with fresh water, osmosis will try to achieve balance by mixing water and chemicals until equilibrium is reached on both sides of the plastic. And if you keep rinsing it, eventually, both sides will just be water, and this will speed up the process because the salt/styrene doesn't dry - only the water.

However, the downside is that this process can take months - or years.

We are here until May, so we're going to keep rinsing every couple of days, and then if she's dry enough, we will coat with thinned epoxy, fair it out, and cover with an epoxy barrier coat followed by bottom paint.

If it isn't dry, we will coat her with some kind of paint, splash her, and head to our summer destination where we will strip off the paint again and try to let it finish drying over the summer. It will be a long trip, but I don't think a short stint in the water will do that much damage. I certainly don't see it going all the way back to where it was.

But who knows?

Only thing I can do is wait and see.

Like I said, she's our boat now - no matter what, LOL

Not only did my boat have much the same as yours so far, I had to chisel off a 4 foot by 6 foot half inch deep area of delaminated and soaked layup.

The best way to get to dry is keep grinding inward till dry...fastest and only sure way to know you have a dry hull. Hull peeling is almost as good.

I have plenty of posts on this forum showing multiple trash cans full of laminate I took off my bottom....a boat that lived 20 years non-stop in Florida overheated canal water. Search, you will find them.

Most people say no big deal as no boat has ever sunk because of this issue. How do they really know that?

The USCG and a few times insurance companies have ruled boats uninsurable or unseaworthy due to hydrolysis (extreme blistering... to make it incorrectly simple).

Steve D'Antonio has some good info on extreme blistering issues.

stevedmarineconsulting.com