Flexing of cockpit deck

No floorboards. They were a two piece addition that made the sloped deck level for comfort and were removable. I think you've got water in the core there, it looks as if it came in through the side (if you don't have any thing coming through the outer hull there on the bottom of the boat). As said earlier, if you cut out an area of inner hull larger than the red rectangle (be careful of not piercing the outer fiberglass skin), I bet you'll see waterlogged balsa or core of some sort. You can then refill it with something (I'd use foam) and then reglass the inner hull to match the inner deck surface.

I'd do it on the trailer, and not in the water :disgust . I don't think it's a safety issue either, it can wait until you're ready to do it.

Charlie
 
Thanks Charlie,

I sent pictures to the C-Dory dealer who sold me the boat. It was a surprise to him (what about a surprise for me). It would have been nice to get a simple apology. He's an old guy in Oregon and you would think he'd know the value of a sincere apology by now! Then again, he is a dealer.

Anyway, it will work out.

Mike
 
Nasty problem, interesting discussion. While I do not think this is a serious safety issue yet, one should keep in mind that the bottom of this boat is its primary structure. It gets its strength from being built as a solid sandwich of glass mat/resin on the outside, end-grain balsa matting next, and another layer of glass mat/resin on the inside, which forms the floor. This structure relies on solid bonding between these layers for strength, and loss of bonding definitely weakens it. Delaying repair might be okay, but one should also consider that summer heat is likely to accelerate the decay of the compromised core in all directions. Moisture intrusion leads to mold and bacteria growth, which causes the actual decay, separation, and weakening, and that happens much faster in warm weather.

Finding and durable sealing the point(s) of water ingression should be part of the repair process.

If a roller or bunk is under or near any of the compromised area, deformation of the outer layer must be assumed. Hence the repair should not be done on the trailer, because it would try to set the bonds of the layers as on the trailer, which would be different from the shape the area would want to assume on the water. The likely result, once in the water, would be renewed separation from the repair core. The boat can easily be set on a flat floor with padding unter the aft end/transom and a single pad unter the bow. Some old boat cushions work fine. Again, the compromised area of the hull should be free of load and be allowed enough time (a couple of days would be my guess) to recover its normal shape before repair.

Good luck! Al
 
Hi Al,

Thanks for the concern and ideas. I agree about getting the repair done sooner rather than this Fall. I did actually call the repair guy today and we are going to shoot for the second week of August to get it in there. He doesn't make specific appointments but that's another story... :crook

If this repair guy is unable to accommodate those suggestions or if he does not have a valid reason for not doing it (since we haven't torn the floor open yet), then perhaps I'll try to find another shop.

I do want to look around before August and make sure this guy is competent.

Oh, and btw forum, I did ask and get an apology from the dealer.

Again, thanks!

Mike
 
Frogpawg and others,

Haven't been on the forum lately, sorry I missed these posts...

Anyway, the balsa in 75% of the cockpit and 25% in the cabin had to be replaced. It was rotten. It wasn't a soaked, dripping rot, just rot.

The prior owner modified the floor just inside the door to place a bilge. That was the likely source of moisture intrusion according to the repair shop. Surprisingly, the staves that hold the gas tanks in were not a source of moisture as they were screwed in (apparently properly so).

I bought this boat from Oregon sight unseen (except for pictures, one time owner, and the "turn key" ready sales pitch I fell for.) I had an surveyor inspect it for insurance as well as my own piece of mind. He found it in great shape but come to find out, he did not use a moisture meter (which I didn't know about).

The local marine surveyor where I live inspected the boat after I found the flexing. Evidently he was the president of the same association of marine surveyors and apologized that such a thing was missed. I was told the surveyor who missed this got fired though who really knows.

It cost 7k to repair the boat, everybody passed the blame. The dealer was of no help, the insurance co was of no help, and the original surveyor of course was of no help.

It's frustrating to do all the right things (proper survey, pay the dealer's invoice, have it shipped properly, etc.) and get shafted.
Oh well, it works great now. :crook
 
Mike,

Sorry to hear about your plight, it does seem you took all proper steps and that hopefully they did can that surveyor, he clearly did not perform a full survey if he did not meter the hull.
Reason I asked was I recently discovered a "soft spot in my cockpit floor and immeditaly got it up out of the water to discover a damaged area on the bottom of my hull. I immeditaly removed it from the water and took it to the fiberglass shop. I will know today or tomorrow what the extent of the moisture migrated but preliminary thoughts are I caught it quickly enough that with a mallet test it only appears to have effected the one balsa square directly above the area of damage. We shall see.
 
Frogpawg,

I hope all goes well. The balsa rot in my boat was present for months if not years before I even took ownership. I just didn't notice the flex right away because we had dri-dek on the cockpit which hid the flexing. It was only when I took out the dri-dek and happened to step in the right place that I noticed the flexing.

Hopefully yours can just dry out after having the hull fixed.

Good luck.
 
C spot swim":1dv31fdi said:
Thanks Charlie,

I sent pictures to the C-Dory dealer who sold me the boat. It was a surprise to him (what about a surprise for me). It would have been nice to get a simple apology. He's an old guy in Oregon and you would think he'd know the value of a sincere apology by now! Then again, he is a dealer.

Anyway, it will work out.

Mike
Click to expand...

As dealers, we have to be very careful with apologies. Unfortunately in today's world "I'm sorry to hear that" gets turned into it being the dealer's fault.

Since you had the boat surveyed, this is entirely on the surveyor. How does he miss a soft spot in the core of that size?

We encourage surveys, because in most cases we don't know the boats that well, and certainly want to be very careful in representing a boat. We've had boats that looked great, and upon survey serious issues have arisen.
 
Unfortunately in today's world "I'm sorry to hear that" gets turned into it being the dealer's fault.
Click to expand...

Evidence for that claim? The opposite is true in other professions, particularly medicine, where a sincere, immediate apology goes a long way. I don't know why it would be different here. In my opinion, only a thief necessarily correlates an apology with culpability.

The entire system had failures in my experience. I don't blame any one person in my case. If anything, I was naive and won't make the same mistake again.
 
The truth be known, that many marine surveyors are less than competent. They use 19th century technology, when 21st century technology is available. (In this case, a moisture meter is a bare minimum, but also there are ultrasonic devices which will ferret out bad cores. But the marine survey community does not want to spend the few thousand dollars to purchase such equipment. On the other hand, the marine survey business will not make you wealthy (except those few who write books etc). The organizations are almost a joke. I filed a formal complaint on a surveyor who had missed multiple items (the boat had been wrecked, then on top of that dropped form a crane, and the strut driven up thru the floor.

The previous owner was guilty of fraud (he had stuffed bath towels under a leaking diesel tank)--and when I threatened him with criminal action he did pay for half of the repair (the total costs were over $30,000). Incidently the previous owner was also a dealer, and had run that boat under "Dealer" numbers for 3 years. (Thus avoiding the salvage title) I did file a complaint with the boat of yacht brokers in Florida, and I suspect that he lost his lisence.

The yacht broker was also at fault. He knew that the boat had been rejected for cause by another party, who had a good marine surveyor. I got that survey. The yacht broker had seen that survey.

Even with that prior survey, with the documented history from the salvage company, and photos showing exactly what the surveyor missed, there was no action by the largest survey association. In fact that same surveyor became an officer of the organization, and today is teaching other surveyors at one of the prestigious schools!

I won't go into the legal issue,but suffice to say, that my attorney advised me not to pursue legal action. It was not worth it. The surveyors do not really have insurance to cover such a law suit--and the organization will only take action if there is a court finding against one of their members (which of course is rare). Most surveyors have very few assets. It is rare that they are bonded or licsenced, or have any E & O insurance.

So--we are out there "naked" in the world--and have to learn ourselves what is good and what is bad. That is the facts of life and boating!

Sorry that you had this problem, but it could have been worse. Although a $7,000 hit is difficult for a boat you thought was in excellent condition.
 
People often assume that a boat dealer has thoroughly checked out every boat in his inventory. The reality is that dealers rarely do so- because often their inventory is consigned.

Unless they take it in trade, there is no reason for them to invest the resources (time and money) to evaluate a boat. They may have worked on the boat in the past, even regularly, but that doesn't mean they are aware of every potential problem on a boat in inventory.

I don't know the situation with this dealer and this boat. The dealer offered the boat for sale, and very likely had no indication of the issue (you stated that with the dri-dek in place it wasn't detectable). Since the dealer likely had no reason to lift up the dri-dek (there's nothing under there) they wouldn't have known of the issue. I can't find fault with the dealer without further information that would indicate he knowingly misrepresented the boat.

Bob's information on surveyors is depressingly true. Surveying is as much art as science, and things get by. Sometimes surveyors take even less time when the buyer isn't present. I've seen surveyors spend all day on a 22 C-Dory, and I've seen surveyors spent 3 hours on a 36 trawler.

Often the best way to find a surveyor is to ask local insurance companies who they trust and recomend.
 
I don't know how it works in the USA but in Canada in the auto industry(where I work) if a dealer sold a vehicle certified and it was found to need $7,000. worth of repairs just to make it structurally safe - they would be required by law to do the repairs at their expense or offer a refund. If they didn't they would loose their dealers licence. If you buy something out of a strangers backyard you are taking your chances, but if you buy from a dealer and pay their price you should have some piece of mind. If a salesperson tells you a vehicle is in excellent shape, bla, bla,(as they all do) and fails to step to the plate when a major structural defect is found(hidden or not) then they are a liar and fraud.

If a dealers salestaff sell you a consignment vehicle there should be some accountability for the commision they receive. If they sell junk and hide behind the word "consignment" then again - liar and fraud. Notwithstanding any laws, if a dealer claims to be honest and reputable then they should conduct themselves in that manner.

This was also not a 20 year old boat that a buyer would normally be more wary of,,,OK I'm done venting now :amgry ,,,going back to my happy place :lol:

Regards, Rob
 
Automotive laws often don't apply to the marine industry- because they are different.

Why is this the dealer's fault when the surveyor missed it? The surveyor was paid to find faults with the boat. He did not. So if the guy to find the faults missed it, how was the dealer supposed to know?

It is also clearley stated in the sales agreement that most dealers use that the vessel is sold as-is, where-is, and that it is the buyers responsibility to inspect the boat, or hire people to inspect the boat, and make sure that it meets their needs.

If you buy a house, and the inspector you hire misses a rotten beam in the crawlspace, is that the realtors fault? Does that make the realtor a "liar" or a "fraud"?
 
In many states (and Tom can clarify this) many sellers have to "disclose" any problems with real estate. I don't think you can equate houses and boats in any way.

Boating remains a "buyer beware" sale.
 
Sorry for my rant, :oops: just feeling the pain of a fellow Bratt. I do not know all the facts of this case in particular but these things I do know:

Yes there are different laws governing the sale of different commodities but scruples are scruples in any business - you got em or you don't.

Home inspectors have their hands tied - not being able to detect faults covered up by renovations done with no permits or building inspector. And yes Bob, we have that law in Ontario - unless a house is listed "AS IS" the realter is required to disclose any problems.

As for the marine survey, I think Bobs post covered that!!

The dealer may not be responsible according to the fine print on the contract, but from my 38 years in the auto industry I have seen many dealers offer a goodwill 50/50 warranty to cover unforeseen breakdowns(such as a blown trany, etc.) The beauty of that is , if they can do the work in-house the 50% that the customer pays should cover his parts /materials cost and wages paid. And he still comes off looking somewhat like a decent guy that the customer might feel inclined to buy from again.

If a dealer offers no warranty on what he is selling - what is he bringing to the table? With all the resources available on the internet, I would buy private, buy cheaper, avoid the middlemans commision, hire a para legal(if neccesary) to do title/lien checks, draw up a sales contract and register ownership papers.

Now this may not be indicitive of the margins enjoyed by every dealer on every 22CD they sell, but a former CD dealer that I know was selling them for $52G in Jan. 2009. 2 years later 1 of the exact same boats, now a new-non-current model was being offered for their invoice cost - $31G!! Now I'm not a mathematician but that sounds like a 21G markup, which sounds a lot like 3 x 7 to me!!

One of the reasons I did not buy that CD was because of the comments regarding the CD company in this forum. Was there even going to be a company when the dust settled to warranty my new boat? Now I don't know the dealer, nor do I live anywhere near the place of this sale - but if I did I would not buy a boat from him based on this single post - which at last count had 4742 views!!

Buyer beware??? maybe it should be Dealer beware!!!

Regards,Rob
 
To get back to my point on this-

With the DriDek in place the problem wasn't detectable. So it is likely that the boat owner was unaware of the problem, the dealer was unaware of the problem and the surveyor missed it.

Why is the focus of some on the dealer misrepresenting the boat? If he was unaware of the issue (as the new owner was unaware until pulling up the DriDek) how is the dealer repsonsible when everyone else missed it?

Why does everything have to be someone's fault? And why is it assumed that there were lies and fraud involved? Sometimes things happen, and it's no one's fault.

Buying a boat, sight unseen (as I recently did) involves risk. And even if the buyer in this case had seen the boat in person before buying it, if he hadn't pulled up the DriDek (and chances are he wouldn't because there is nothing under it) he wouldn't have noticed any issue either.

It's easy to point fingers after the fact, and certainly I'm not privy to whatever conversations took place. But to assume that the dealer was dishonest or has no scruiples is unfair without hearing both sides.
 
I hear you and agree with that you are saying about the dealer(s). On the other hand, I feel that a surveyor should pull up any liftable cockpit sole covering, especially on a cored hull. The boat is basically simple, so I would expext particular attention to be paid to the few possible problem areas (core being one of them, and a potentially expensive one to repair).

That said, my experience agrees with what Thataway said, in that there seem to be some less-than-wonderful surveyors, for various reasons. Combine that with buyers who believe they will all be competent experts, and problems can arise. Much of my own boat-work knowledge came from repairing a boat that had passed a survey (by an accredited surveyor) with flying colors. I learned to repair rotten core, blisters, and more on that one :cry (and now I tend to lay my own hands and eyes on a boat before buying most of the time).

There are good surveyors, too, of course.
 
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