J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Brass Monkey Recoring Update

My floor is out and I'm cutting and removing balsa.



I don't think you'll like what I've found in the "second bilge" area. The vermiculite under the floor in front of the step was nasty. Black and smelled like disel fuel. Some was well attached to the hull and some wasn't. Looks like this:



The inner skin by my sink appears to be made of a single layer of 8 once matt with a single layer of 24 ounce woven roving on top. That's it. Looks like this:



There are small black spots on the inside (the balsa side) of the skin. They're at the places where the edges of the glass ribons meet in the roving. A little hard to see but looks like this:



Some of the core was black ad nasty just like the vermiculite. Right here in this area, the core smells like disel fuel, just like the vermiculite. You can see a bit of that still attached to the inside of the inner skin above.

Most of the balsa is actually OK. Dry and structurally sound, but it has a stain pattern. Black spots that match the spots on the inner skin:



I disected one of the black spots in a sound and dry piece of balsa. The black stain runs from the inside face of the balsa toward the outer hull.



Concusion? The inner skin is so thin it has allowed water, and some disel fuel, to soak through from the saturated vermiculite.

I warned you that you wouldn't like this.

I will be removing every cubic inch of vermiculite from my boat.