Fruits Of My Labor (A-113)

[ebb]

Capt Kent,
No problem upgrading yer Dad's seamanship, eh?

What's interesting with these long imprints on Commanders & Ariels(rather than vertical) is that they are not by definition 'hard spots.' Are they?

They are cosmetic, not structural. And they occured at the birthing, not later as the supposed 'working' of the hull.

So that is why I call du Plessis on his unsubstantiated assumption that these hard spots are somehow dangerous. No doubt they are on ultra-light over engineered racing machines. And some boatshow sailboats and powerboats.

I can see perhaps that if you hit a piling on an unsupported section of the hull it could deflect and return to shape with minimal delamination and damage. While if the hull was hit where a bulkhead was you might get some crunching or a hole, depending on whether it was gasketed or not. I don't know. I would really like to hear what an engineer has to say on this, who has direct experience with frp hulls. Or some credible survey of damage to boats after an Isabel.

For what it's worth: On our hard relatively thick skinned old hulls it is ok to paste on edges of plywood and cleats if the join is filleted and tabbed.

Since that is what I'm doing to 338,
I'm seriously open to any call on my practice.

It is possible that an old fiberglass hull can be thought of as more BRITTLE. Has any expert spoken to this? Haven't seen it. The 5 or 6 points of du Plessis' are the way to go.


[I meant to add: Last weekend I did some filling and fairing. Between spurts of damn longboarding I did a lot of eyeballing from the stern up the sides.
It became clear that C'pete's observation that one side of his babe was out - t'other side in.... could be seen on 338, as well. Not exactly the same, but one side of 338 is more fair than the other going forward. Must be why I've almost anthropomorphosized the Ariel whose left and right symetries are a little off. Each one of our boats has its own special character!] ,,,,,,,yea!........