Soft spots

There has been a lot or questions and answers about soft spots on fiberglass hulls. Have they made any changes in the construction of the fiberglass hulls to minimize this problem? Second question why does it not happen to all hulls after a certain age? I have a mid 70's 16 that is still solid as a rock.

Roy,

The reasons for delamination are diverse, and definitely a weakness of a "cored/sandwich" construction. But the tradeoff is a much lighter-weight structure with great rigidity.

Delamination is not simply a function of age either, that is why your old boat (mine too) is rock solid. However, if you walk, bounce, climb or pound excessively on specific areas of the boat you`ll eventually separate the layers. Even brand new, state-of-the-art America`s Cup yachts have been known to experience delamination in pounding seas.

As for changing the construction methods;

Rotomolded boats do not have this problem, nor do wooden, aluminum or ferrocement boats. ...BUT, wood rotts, is expensive, and can be heavy; rotomolded boats - although very durable - just aren`t very pretty and can be tricky to repair; ferrocement catamarans ...hmnnn...fagittaboutit. Aluminum...maybe! And solid fiberglass is just too heavy when it is built up to have enough rigidity.


Oh well, if only boat construction progressed as fast as computers...then we`d all be crashing, but at least the boats would getting a lot faster - yup, twice the speed every year and a half!!


Dave

The reasons for delamination are diverse... I agree, besides the pressure from stepping on it some people suspect climatic factors (high temperature) severe sunlight (UV ray) and moisture / condensation in the hull. Other people have IDed issues related to model year or manufacturer (coleman,...)

Not sure about the composites with out foam cores. I might be wrong but I thought that most of the fancier NACRA's (performance cat) came with out a foam core. Plenty of smaler mono hulls are constructed with out foam cores. Compared to a hobie 16 I think they do well in terms of weight. As long as the delamination process does not effect the actual laminat (which is unlikely) those constructions should never encounter the Hobie problem (delamination between foam core and composite material).

Patrick