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A few weeks ago we had some serious rain out here. I've lived here for over 25 years now and I don't recall ever getting anywhere near this amount of rain before November. Nevertheless we got it in spades. I knew we were going to get a soaking and we have a pretty good sized tarp that is watertight and would cover most of the boat. However, the night before it was supposed to get wet, I am informed that the tarp was left in a friend's car by my wife and that she would try to take care of it the next day. I go ahead and prep with the tired old tarp and plastic I have on hand and hope for the best. Long story short: I have yet to see that tarp and by the time I just go ahead and buy a heavy duty one, the damage had been done. There was so much water in the cockpit that it overflowed into the storage compartments under the seats. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but I have known for some time that my original paint had been checking inside the boat. I had already sanded, primed and repainted the forepeak and cabin area. The storage areas had only been sanded and one coat of primer applied. While this would have been fine for surface moisture, it was disasterous with that amount of water just standing in there. Again, long story short: it appears to have gotten into the wood on the starboard side as I saw evidence of the wood swelling under the hull and a little crack in the finish along the chine. I begin to poke with my thumbnail and find the glass easily separating from the hull. I decided to sand and see how bad it is. I could see by the color of the surface and how it is interacting with the sander that it is wet. I continue to remove glass with my thumb and have been able to easily remove most of the glass from the hull this way. It covers approximately the storage area above. Outside of that, the glass remains tight to the surface. So, I've had it sanded and opened for drying all week. Every day I pull back the tarp in the morning to let it breathe from the top and bottom and every evening I've been covering her up. She's been dry ever since I removed the water from the inside. Tomorrow I'm borrowing a tool that will allow me to probe the inside of the wood to measure moisture content. It's been very windy, warm and dry here for some time now and we have virtually no humidity. I'm praying I like what I see on the meter tomorrow!!! If all is well, I will then have to re-glass the area. This presents yet another big problem. I really don't want to pull her off the trailer and roll her over again. I need to figure a way to apply glass underneath and have it stay in place from underneath. Can this be done?? My thinking is to apply a coat of epoxy, give it some time to go off. get good and tacky and apply the cloth at this time without wetting it out. My hope is to get a "decent" bond between the epoxy and glass to hold and set up a little. Later (couple of hours, perhaps) I could safely wet out and get a bond with the original skin of epoxy laid down earlier. Perhaps someone has some other ideas for me.

Hey Tom, bummer! Some thoughts on the glass, go ahead and glass just like you normally would. Apply some to the hull, stick the cloth to it (if you need too hold it up with some tape along the edges you can cut off the edges with an exacto knife later if need be) and wet out the cloth at this time. If you wait to wet out the cloth until after the epoxy starts to kick the cloth will not wet out very well and thus will not bond to the wood very good and will eventually fail.

Good luck.

Thanks for the info, Angie. I was thinking about taping the edges to hold it in place. I think that's where it will want to start pulling off. Now, If I could only turn off this stupid "Gravity" thing for a couple of days!!!!!! Hmmmmmm.......Maybe NASA could help me out here.

Go ahead and oversize the cloth with the intention of cutting it to desired size once the epoxy kicks good, you can trim it with an exacto knife once it starts to kick and then apply resin over the whole area again to make sure you have all the edges covered good.

Well, I just got back from taking some moisture readings and it does not look good. Right now I'm getting readings from 22-36% moisture content. Therefore no glassing yet. As I was driving back I was thinking that it is going to take some direct heat to dry it up in there. My plan is to get one or two of those flared aluminum bowl shaped light covers. The kind you see with the spring clamps on them, coupled with a high wattage bulb and mount them right under the exposed area leaving them set there for a few days and nights. Hopefully that would promote some interior drying. No rain in the forecast for now with another major heat up for Monday and Tuesday. This morning, however we had a rather cool and very wet fog which is only now burning off (11:00AM).

meanwhile...................I went out and got one of those 500 watt halogen worklights. I set up the tarp like a tent over the damaged area, put plastic on the ground and basically set up a drying room. I have the lamp out there doing its thing right now and will go check in on it again in a couple of hours; perhaps move it to place it under another section. From just feeling it with my hand, I think this will indeed dry it out and I think I should have done this sooner. I feel much better about it now.

I am not an expert at boats or epoxy but I have had several experiences with flooded basements and a couple of major toilet over flows (where the water went into flooring under carpet and rolled flooring). My dad had a few rental properties and they were amazing instances of mayhem.

We use a combination of fans and heat to dry things out. The fans are just two of those 24" cheapies from WalMart. The heat was from one of those halogen lights that come with an adjustable pole. They generate a tremendous amount of heat. Moving warm/hot air works wonders. A tarp over the top to prevent rain or dew might help but be sure and shape it so condensation runs off away from your project.

After drying is complete I would paint everything with cpes before glassing. There are some instructions on the rot doctor site that suggest not letting it completely cure before starting the glassing. I really liked the penetration the cpes made on my SYP keel as compared to the lack of penetration that straight epoxy had. I also read an article about making your own cpes from regular epoxy. Maybe one of the members with a better understanding of epoxy can explain that?

I don't know if this is a good suggestion but I was cruising sites late one night and found one (I wish I had bookmarked) where a guy was glassing the side and bottom of his hull and he used pins with small folded pieces of plastic cloth, the stuff a bit thicker then those paint drop cloths, to hold the cloth in place as he applied the epoxy. He later pulled the pins out and peeled the plastic away and sanded before adding another layer of epoxy. The whole thing reminded me of my dad's face when he cut himself shaving and dabbed on 3-4 small pieces of toilet paper to stop the bleeding. Sorry for the visual there but it made me chuckle.

Ventilation will dry things out the fastest. Forced ventilation, like those box fans will do a good job. Below 15%, with 12 being ideal moisture content.

I've stopped using penetrating epoxy (CPES) all together. After testing and research, it's not worth the additional cost, effort and doesn't do what many suggest, like the Rot Doctor, who is nothing more then a Smith Brothers (the CPES manufacture) reseller. Sure he has good thing to say, he's marketing and selling the stuff for them.

West System has a good series of test data on penetrating epoxy performance as well as a few other sites. This coupled with my own testing, suggests well applied hot on hot laminating epoxy (the regular stuff we use on boats) does a better job, with less effort and cost.

There are a few different ways to apply cloth to surfaces, especially vertical and overhead areas. I prefer two different methods (wet on wet and the dry methods). The first is, let the wetout coat get good and tacky before applying the cloth, apply the fabric then wetout with more (fresh) resin. This is my usual first choice (wet on wet method). The tacky wetout coat holds the cloth where you want it, but it can be re-positioned easily, without staples, tape or clamps. It wets out normally with the application of fresh resin and the chemical bond is maintained. The other way I do it sometimes, is to spray the surface to be sheathed, with 3M 77 spray adhesive (very, very lightly) and let this flash off. The fabric will stick to this, permit re-positioning and doesn't affect the bond when you wet it out with resin. This is a modified dry method. Both allow the bond to be chemical, which is the best you can get, don't require other things to hold the cloth and good control of the amount of resin can be applied.

Thanks everybody!!! I'll be going back out one more time before dark and I'm going to place a fan in there. The area of concern is on the bottom and I have that one lamp (500 watt halogen) about 12" down from the surface; facing up at the hull. It's putting plenty of heat on the surface. I suspect that with this and the fan on it overnight, I should be in good shape by tomorrow and I can commence to glassing. I have that adhesive spray here on hand and I could go either way with the glass (hot or cold). Both of them sound manageable. I guess I'll flip a coin tomorrow.

As it turns out; I ended up doing other work today and didn't get to re-glassing. I was in a lot of turmoil over this problem and it wasn't until yesterday that I figured out what needed to be done. I couldn't figure out how I was going to get that moisture out of there. The solution, I believe is going to work out fine. For most of the day yesterday I just had that heat lamp on it and overnight I had that along with a fan. All of this I had enclosed with tarps to isolate it from the outside environment.





I will probably try to re-glass on wednesday or Thursday after work. Ordianarilly I wouldn't attempt to apply epoxy so late in the day, but I believe with this set up I can do so effectively without worrying about moisture from fog and low overnight temps.

Initially I was so embarassed that I got burned by this I was questioning posting it here for all the world to see. Today I'm glad I did. I'm finding that this is, as Paul R. stated recently, what it is to be a boat owner. I'm sure I'll find myself doing plenty of repairs and mods as time goes on. It's a very good feeling. This road is full of problems looking for solutions. Needless to say, I wouldn't have a clue without this bulletin board....Thanks everyone for being here!