J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment A River Runs Through It

I didn't have enough to do on the bottom of the boat this morning :-) so I decided to open up the area below the exhaust. I knew this area was going to be wet, but some of it was much worse than I was expecting. I had kind of thought for no good reason there was some kind of glass barrier between the transom and the lower hull, but that is not really the case. So the moisture that was in the transom was also seriously into the hull too. Some of this was extremely rotten so now I can core above and below the exhaust now. Before coring I may create a thin barrier of glass so that any future moisture doesn't find its way so easily into the coring below.

While that fun was going on I have a section behind the keel and near the solid center section under heat and vacuum, albeit with not a lot of vacuum. The film seems to be well sealed to the hull, but I'm losing vacuum through the hull coring so only getting about 4" of Hg. So with the heat and essentially an air current maybe this stubborn area will still dry out.







So the next step is to lightly grind the inner skin to clean it up and let it dry. Followed by some fun grinding of the remaining resin on the old balsa core and then let that dry out. Sooner or later some core will get installed. When I started this morning I had the idea I would be working on the coring on the transom most of the day, but that can now wait until the bottom is ready to get done as well.