Tell me about owning a boat

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about owning a boat

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Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Pookah posted:

Trailer-sailers are a good starting point, as long as you have somewhere to store them on land - unless fiberglass construction has fundamentally changed in the last 20 years, I was always told that fiberglass boats need to spend time out of the water to preserve the integrity of the hull from osmosis.

This is not true. I'll reiterate my stand that boating is unfortunately saddled with a great many myths and misconceptions, probably because it's never been a "professionalized" hobby. Owning a boat doesn't need to be expensive or complicated, but unfortunately what ends up happening is that people buying really old boats - which would be like looking for a car and then buying a veteran car from the 50s to save money.

Dante fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 6, 2022

# ? Feb 6, 2022 17:56

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 01:39

Pookah: Aug 21, 2008; 🪶Caw🪶

Good to know that old info has been clarified and improved. Do fiberglass boats not suffer from osmosis any more? What was the actual cause if it wasn't prolonged immersion in water on hulls that had air pockets from when they were constructed?
I'm genuinely curious to know, it was a big concern back in the day.

# ? Feb 6, 2022 20:22

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Pookah posted:

Good to know that old info has been clarified and improved. Do fiberglass boats not suffer from osmosis any more? What was the actual cause if it wasn't prolonged immersion in water on hulls that had air pockets from when they were constructed?
I'm genuinely curious to know, it was a big concern back in the day.

Every organic material that you put in water will eventually be penetrated by water molecules (osmosis), including GRP boats with gelcoats, though a good gelcoat will keep this to a minimum. There's going to be some moisture content in any fiberglass hull, and that's in general unproblematic. Blistering occurs when the miniscule water molecules that penetrate the gelcoat and fiberglass combine with soluble elements in the laminate through hydrolysis and form a larger molecule which then gets trapped, eventually leading to the characteristic "blistering" which are trapped pockets of acidic liquid in the hull. Taking the boat out of the water does nothing to deal with this, the blistering is caused by trapped liquid compounds, not that fibreglass needs to be "dried out". The oil price spike in the 70s in due to OPEC embargo meant that lots of boats in the US and the UK were built with cheaper water soluble resins that are prone to cause blistering. Blistering looks ugly and theoretically can cause structural damage (though I don't think anyone has ever actually had hull integrity issues due to it), but in general fixing blisters is just a maintenance chore to do while scraping your hull (until you decide to pay to get it reglassed). There's plenty of boats that have been in water for 30-40 years and have no or minimal blistering, and in general modern boats will have minimal blistering due to better production techniques, materials and modern gelcoats. To continue my veteran car analogy - modern cars aren't impervious to rust, but advances in construction in the last 30 years (mainly hot dip galvanizing to cover the steel with zinc) have made it much less of a problem compared to classic rust buckets of the past.

tldr; lovely construction is to blame, blistering is much less of an issue with modern boats.

Dante fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Feb 7, 2022

# ? Feb 7, 2022 09:50

Pookah: Aug 21, 2008; 🪶Caw🪶

Thank you v. much for the excellent effort post

. Yeah, my knowledge on the subject of osmosis in fibreglass hulls is both pretty old and second-hand so... not the most reliable obviously. The boats we had would been built in the 70s, so shoddy materials were quite likely.

# ? Feb 7, 2022 19:27

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

Pookah posted:

Wooden boats are 100% money pits - avoid.

I think this isn't true for smaller boats. You just need to keep up with the yearly maintenance which really shouldn't be a big hassle.

I'm mostly about fishing boats and the like, not sailing boats, so I guess things can be different there, but boats of that size always struck me as money pits regardless.

# ? Feb 9, 2022 10:17

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

His Divine Shadow posted:

I think this isn't true for smaller boats. You just need to keep up with the yearly maintenance which really shouldn't be a big hassle.

I'm mostly about fishing boats and the like, not sailing boats, so I guess things can be different there, but boats of that size always struck me as money pits regardless.

Regardless of size a wooden boat comes with extensive maintenance, even if it's a rowboat. I wouldn't recommend getting a wooden boat unless you specifically love wooden boats and working on them.

# ? Feb 14, 2022 15:59

Pekinduck: May 10, 2008

If it floats, fucks or flies, rent, don't buy.

# ? May 22, 2022 05:20

Cemetry Gator: Apr 3, 2007; Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm driving my automobile?

Pekinduck posted:

If it floats, fucks or flies, rent, don't buy.

Where do I go to rent a duck then?

# ? May 23, 2022 17:15

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Cemetry Gator posted:

Where do I go to rent a duck then?

The ducks at the park are free. You can just take one.

# ? May 23, 2022 23:00

PokeJoe: Aug 24, 2004; hail cgatan

I don't think you should be loving the ducks at the park

# ? May 24, 2022 06:49

BIG FLUFFY DOG: Feb 16, 2011; On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

Boats are crazy because commercial boating is so heavily regulated that you have to radio the coast guard control to take a poo poo and have enough time at sea to have a �boat making GBS threads license� of the proper engine type, water type, and tonnage and for recreational boating they let any loving yahoo with a bunch of money to burn do whatever he wants and just sail right in front of the boat at 5 feet and wave back as the captain blasts the danger signal because they think he�s saying hi.

Don�t buy a boat.

# ? Jun 25, 2022 03:17

War and Pieces: Apr 24, 2022; DID NOT VOTE FOR FETTERMAN

Any horror stories with those inflatable dingies?

# ? Jun 26, 2022 00:23

Jaguars!: Jul 31, 2012

My dad once rescued a couple of guys in one of those pool size inflatables who were out fishing in the local harbour on a rainy day. The were wearing raincoats but no life jackets and would 100% died if my dad hadn't happened out there. So maybe don't do that.

# ? Jun 26, 2022 01:13

inspire: Nov 24, 2004; Eyyy!

Boats aren't that expensive - especially if you keep on a trailer. The problem is that a lot of owners don't undertake any sort of preventative maintenance.

# ? Jun 29, 2022 01:05

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 01:39

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

This fiberglass boat is from the 80s or early 90s and maintenance has been pulling it up on the beach and heaving it over when autumn comes so water didn't collect in it. Can take a 4-5 hp outboarder.

Last night my son caught his first fish. I dunno if it went back or not, he doesn't like fish.

# ? Jun 29, 2022 07:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about owning a boat

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