Major Repairs
We have extensive experience in major structural repairs to large yachts, as well as fiberglass repairs, repairing teak yacht interiors, and painting with Awlgrip, Sterling, and other high-end paints.
- Damage due to grounding in motor yachts can include bent shafts, destroyed
shaft supports, damaged rudder housings and posts, even destruction
of the transmission when the shaft is violently pulled out. Stuctural
damage to the hull must be carefully surveyed and repaired to new-yacht
standards.
- Stuctural damage to the hull can occur in metal yachts (both steel and aluminum) or in older composite and fiberglass boats due to osmosis. Townsend Bay Marine is a pioneer in the use of infrared imaging to locate water saturation in cored hulls.
Case Study: A Water-Saturated Hull
In 2002 the owner of a 1987 Tayana 52 brought his boat to TBM to work on her badly blistered bottom. Although we peeled the gelcoat and left the boat on the hard to dry out, repeated readings from a moisture meter indicated that the hull was not drying out. When water literally pored out of a test hole, we realized this was more than typical osmotic water intrusion. Several core samples indicated that the hull was cored with scored PVC foam with open, rather than filled, kerfs, creating an enormous structure designed to trap water.
The obvious repair of removing the outer layer of fiberglass, replacing or repairing the core, and re-skinning with new fiberglass would have cost more than the value of the boat. However, there was a chance we wouldn't need to do that. We brought in an expert in infrared imaging who was able to ascertain that some areas of the hull were very wet, but others were reasonably dry. The imaging process was able to pinpoint those areas that needed draining and relaminating. The repairs were by no means trivial, but they made economic sense given the value of the boat and the owner was quite pleased with the end result.
(Note: for more details on this project, see "Infrared Imaging," by David King, in Professional Boatbuilder, Oct/Nov 2003; www.proboat.com.)