Looked @ Yacht

[Danny_Labrador]

Looked at a yacht to buy last week.....decided not to.

BUT I would appreciate any expert comments on these three images.

(posting images..........this is difficult)

First two ...... this is a big problem isn't it


Last one...... what causes this ?



(how do you put text under picture ?)


(think I have discovered why the forum is so slow - these images are uploaded from my computer - that's a big overhead - it wont accept Flickr text strings.)

 

[wotayottie]

cant tell whether the first two are a big problem or minor. depends whether the obvious crack is a join or a crack. if its a join and the bit above is a moulded stub then I would expect to see what there is on the photo. the keel will move a bit and the antifoul wont so a line appears. but what is that bronze bit thats bolted on?

the last photo looks like flex cracks in a weak laminate. maybe something hitting from behind in a locker

what sort of boat?

 

[Boat44]

You do get movement in keel/hull joins. You need to check the bilge area inside the boat for signs of damage. A "typical grounding" will have the tendency to pull the front of the keel down and push the back up, so also look for damage at the front of the keel and look at the leading and trailing edges of the keel/hull join.

In nay event you should always get a full survey and explicitly point this area out to a surveyor as something you would like them to examine.

Might just be a bit normal keel movement with corresponding cracked fairing/antifouling. Could be something else.

As to the cracks on what I presume is the transom, looks like the step has been hit at some stage. Maybe no more than cracked gelcoat. Again, if you get a survey explicitly point this out to the surveyor.

 

[Danny_Labrador]

Here is a better view

 

[saxonpirate]

Even fully exploded it's still difficult to tell exactly what's going on there. If indeed the hull has a stub it could well be a very thick filling/fairing job that has parted at the joint. The raggedness of the crack points to this. Worst case scenario is an actual crack in the keel casting. This is not unknown with porous castings. The lack of rust staining though makes this unlikely. Definitely worth checking out though if you're thinking of buying.

As for the transom step, not too much to worry about really. More cosmetic than structural I would have thought.

 

[snowleopard]

As I said before, the first two are most likely cracking of a non-structural filler/fairing around the root of the keel. The last looks as though the step has had a hard whack.

In both cases a look inside will give a good idea of how serious the problems are. In the case of the keel one needs to look in the bilge to see whether the keel is attached direct to the canoe body or to a moulded stub keel. If it's the former the damaged bit will be non-structural. If the latter there may be more of a problem.

In the case of the step, a look inside should show if the laminate has been damaged. If there is whitening it indicates that the resin in the moulding has cracked. If the inner laminate is white rather than natural coloured it can be hard to tell. It could in any case be very tricky to make an invisible repair on a dark gelcoat like that as you'll never be able to match the colour (not even with the right colour of resin as the existing will have faded slightly)