Reading REDHAIREDGAL's thread about their Contest 34 and hearing other folks tales of woe regarding blisters and water absorption.... and knowing you don't want water to sit in the bilges... set me to thinking. (always dangerous )

Has anyone every calculated how much water gets aborbed in a hull made of the various resins and how fast it is absorbed?
If you haul out a fiberglass boat and let it sit for X amount of time has anyone every quantified how much moisture would migrate OUT of the hull and compared that w/ how much was in the hull to start? I would suspect it would be a very slow process otherwise we'd all have soggy, watersoaked hulls in short order.

Just the morning mind worm...

I would suggest getting a good bilge pump...and spending time thinking about things that really matter. Just be glad you weren't around when the worms were in your boat, NOT your mind! Be Happy!

 

Gelcoat blisters are very rarely a structural issue. Paint over em and forget em. As Pascoe says, trying to dry the hull is pointless because the stuff that dissolves under the gelcoat will not allow the water to evaporate (my interpretation of what he says). If you insist on trying to dry around a ground out blister, try a heat gun and you will be amazed at how much water is in there.
The weight cannot increase much at all as fiberglass is already close to the density of water. Absorbing water only brings the density up to 1 gm/cc. Not an issue I'd say.

 

Well, how much moisture migrates out depends on a lot of factors, like the temperature, the ambient humidity, whether the gelcoat has been peeled or not, etc...

Reading REDHAIREDGAL's thread about their Contest 34 and hearing other folks tales of woe regarding blisters and water absorption.... and knowing you don't want water to sit in the bilges... set me to thinking. (always dangerous )

Has anyone every calculated how much water gets aborbed in a hull made of the various resins and how fast it is absorbed?
If you haul out a fiberglass boat and let it sit for X amount of time has anyone every quantified how much moisture would migrate OUT of the hull and compared that w/ how much was in the hull to start? I would suspect it would be a very slow process otherwise we'd all have soggy, watersoaked hulls in short order.

Just the morning mind worm...

 

I only ask b/c I've seen a number of comments both here and on other forums that talk about barrier coating and how the boat has been on the hard for a while so it's had time to "dry out" and I've always thought that was a bunch of

BULL-SHYTE.

I mean really, if moisture is going to infiltrate the fiberglass do you REALLY think it's going to migrate out to any significant degree over several months?

I was just curious if anyone has actually tested this.

 

Common sense would tell me that the outmigration time would be considerably longer than the inward migration. The inward migration had a fair amount of pressure that helped the water penetrate the hull, while the outward migration would have no pressure gradient to make it occur. Consequently, the only migration that could occur would be from evaporation and temperature changes, which I believe would really be a very, very slow process.

JMO,

Gary