Noticed some drips around the shaft log and shaft strut. It was noted in the survey a couple years ago when I bought her, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but when I finally started cutting on the hull this weekend, the wet core just kept going and going. A little peeved with the surveyor as this is definitely much more of an area than he suggested, but that’s just the nature of these things I guess.
Still contemplating getting it done by the boatyard or taking some time off and tackling it myself…
Going with epoxy since it’s below the waterline and the extra adhesion vs. poly/vinyl.
Also going with balsa again given the large area and expense of other options.
Initial ingress appears to be around the shaft strut, and shaft log. Very little boundary of what looks like barely reinforced resin between either of them and the adjacent core. Similar to having to cut out and replace the core around most of the port lights due to no resin reinforcement around the handrail fastener holes, this all could have been prevented by a modicum of extra work by the factory. I love this boat but certainly frustrating.
Just about every inch of exposed core in the pictures is wet. I still haven’t gotten to all the clean edges yet, restricted by the poppets. About half of it is still solid but moist, the other half is somewhere between delaminated and pure mush.
Does anyone know the original or have suggestions for the laminate schedule? Using epoxy, I don’t need the CSM part of 1708, but not sure if I shouldn’t use it for bulk? Biax, triax, or quad?
The area around the shaft log is appropriately quite a bit thicker than the rest of the hull. Is there a different lay up schedule for that area?
Suggest checking with Warren River Boat Works….most disappointing those few extra steps in design and build were cut short during those years.
I love my 30 but FYI did take a few surprising shortcuts in sealing some of the thru hull penetrations on deck . I am hull #3 so maybe they learned some lessons as they built more hulls.
I had extensive work done on my shaft, strut and seal back in late 23/24. I wish this this post had been available when I was out of the water. I would have been much more engaged in monitoring that work. Having said this, my hull is solid glass about 6 inches either side of centerline so I am hoping I dodged this bullet.
My strut bolts are right under the middle of the diesel tank, of course, so it is difficult to see much more than than actual bolts. Leakage of the bolts was one of the issues I had to address during that haul out. gulp!
Meanwhile, I hope you will periodically post updates on the repair that will be a major project and an interesting one.
The interesting part is that the shaft/strut is not on centerline on the 40/40, but the starboard side of it is where the good core starts. I don’t know what they did around the centerline but the bad core doesn’t seem to extend to the starboard side at all (fingers crossed).
I’m thinking that part of my repair will be periodic “walls” of thickened epoxy around sections of new core that, should another leak happen, prevent the moisture from wicking any further than that section.
The strut itself seems very well bolted to the inner laminate. I don’t see any leakage around the fasteners on the inside, but your comment makes me want to re-bed them just in case while everything is open. I will definitely extend the non-cored area much further out around the strut. There seems to be some kind of flexible adhesive remaining around where the strut meets the hull, I wonder if it’s 5200. If so I might just leave it as is.
I will definitely post updates; the vast majority of searches for core replacements come back with work on decks, so it may be helpful to others who are looking for work on hulls. And it always seems to be useful for other Freedom owners to see the inner construction of things you normally don’t get to see.
Great info. I think the offset strut explains it. I’ll bet when you are able to look at it that there is some solid fiberglass at centerline. It seems like I have heard others who have the larger boats have mentioned this.
