I was able to get a moisture reading well away from the leaking deck fittings when I drilled a hole for the gas tank deck fill. This shows that the balsa core is saturated throughout the boat. The wood looks perfect, but it probably would not have lasted long at this moisture content.

The deck has now been opened for two months in a heated garage with a heating mat placed on the deck and heat lamps underneath. Here, I covered the opening in the deck with plastic with a psychrometer (air moisture meter) enclosed. Relative humidity in the garage was now down to 50%. After 24 hours applying heat to the surrounding area, it only got to 60% RH inside of the plastic.

So, in addition to eliminating the deck penetrations, I'm hoping to clean up this mess. You can just barely see the fuel filter screwed to the deck between the gas cans, which are screwed to the deck inside of the battery trays, which are also screwed to the deck. All screws go into the balsa core.

So far, every deck penetration that could be done wrong was done wrong. I found that the little snap fittings for the bimini had been pop riveted (and many had failed because of using aluminum with stainless). Those that had been replaced over the years also had leaked. All have now been removed. I only found a couple of bad spots in the balsa core, and those appeared to be discolored rather than rotten. Again, with the balsa core moisture at full saturation, it is difficult to identify exactly what was leaking. I didn't find anything that made me want to tear off the fiberglass laminate (from below) and examine, but then I'm also really reluctant to go there.

I was able to get a moisture reading well away from the leaking deck fittings when I drilled a hole for the gas tank deck fill. This shows that the balsa core is saturated throughout the boat. The wood looks perfect, but it probably would not have lasted long at this moisture content.

It still gets bored out to help dry out the boat and get a protective epoxy coating in the future.

The bow light was okay because of a big gob of caulk.

Here's the deck with most of the hardware removed. Even if the holes were okay (which it was on the anchor roller), I'm going to wait months before filling them in hopes that moisture will escape from all of the openings.

M

I was able to get a moisture reading well away from the leaking deck fittings when I drilled a hole for the gas tank deck fill. This shows that the balsa core is saturated throughout the boat. The wood looks perfect, but it probably would not have lasted long at this moisture content.

Marco Flamingo
Oct 29, 2015

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