Cure for biggeritis
- Thread starter ShellBack
- Start date
Just finished a complete waxing of Thalassa for winter storage and that cured me of any thought of a bigger boat. Trouble is it looks so great that I'm ready to go back in :smilepEl and Bill
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Good point. A basic concept, helpful for us in making most decisions, was learned early on from discussions with parents when we were children: cost vs benefit. And those costs, as you point out, are certainly not always dollar costs. In fact, for us, the non-dollar cost/benefit factors are often the most important, (and not because we were part of the top 1% 
-- retired school teachers don't usually reach that rarified atmosphere).
-- retired school teachers don't usually reach that rarified atmosphere).The lower Island does have some of the best waters around and we were in for 4 wonderful months but it is time. We may launch from time to time over the winter and looking forward to meeting some of you next year. A question though, when I was waxing up close I noticed around the exhaust vent for the Wallace that there was some cracking in the Gel Coat. Hmmmm??
I like the cost/benefit point, and also just the point that it's good to think about things from various angles.
Can you describe it more - or even better, post a photo? Was it, say, two or three single cracklets radiating out from where fasteners might be (so, like individual sun rays at, for example, "3, 8, and 11 O'clock"), or was it cracks that look sort of like parentheses enclosing the fitting, or...?
If it's the "sun ray" type of cracks, those are often caused by the installer (for any piece of hardware, not just this one) drilling tight clearance holes for the fasteners, and then not chamfering them at the top. Then when said fasteners are tightened you often get "sun ray" cracks radiating out from them.
That said, regular thru hulls don't usually have individual fasteners, but are more like big (hollow) machine screws themselves, with a retaining ring on the inside where a regular nut would be on a regular screw. I suppose if the clearance hole were really tight then maybe the through hull body could make sun ray cracks, but that's not something I've seen. (I guess I had better go look at how the Wallas through hull is installed.)
If it's the "parenthesis" cracks, then that may have been caused by pressure right on the through hull - say someone hit a dock just right (erm... make that "just wrong") and the through hull had a good bit of inward thrust put on it - well, then I could imagine parenthesis cracks forming around it.
As you can tell, seeing how the cracks look is a good clue to how and why they might have happened.
ShellBack":2ttbghwy said:
Can you describe it more - or even better, post a photo? Was it, say, two or three single cracklets radiating out from where fasteners might be (so, like individual sun rays at, for example, "3, 8, and 11 O'clock"), or was it cracks that look sort of like parentheses enclosing the fitting, or...?
If it's the "sun ray" type of cracks, those are often caused by the installer (for any piece of hardware, not just this one) drilling tight clearance holes for the fasteners, and then not chamfering them at the top. Then when said fasteners are tightened you often get "sun ray" cracks radiating out from them.
That said, regular thru hulls don't usually have individual fasteners, but are more like big (hollow) machine screws themselves, with a retaining ring on the inside where a regular nut would be on a regular screw. I suppose if the clearance hole were really tight then maybe the through hull body could make sun ray cracks, but that's not something I've seen. (I guess I had better go look at how the Wallas through hull is installed.)
If it's the "parenthesis" cracks, then that may have been caused by pressure right on the through hull - say someone hit a dock just right (erm... make that "just wrong") and the through hull had a good bit of inward thrust put on it - well, then I could imagine parenthesis cracks forming around it.
As you can tell, seeing how the cracks look is a good clue to how and why they might have happened.