{"id":985,"date":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=985"},"modified":"2015-10-16T12:06:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T17:06:27","slug":"hull-material-grp-phobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/hull-material-grp-phobia\/","title":{"rendered":"Hull Material–GRP Phobia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi Steve, Firstly thanks for the books, most of which are bending my shelves. I am looking for my first bluewater cruiser (second hand) and am paralyzed by the conflicting hull material shortcoming. You extol aluminum but here in Australia they are expensive and few and far between ( I would love one however). Steel rusts like mad but is good for offshore can be fixed in far flung places and its integrity is sound up to the last minute before failure. GRP is very common but I understand on boats 10–20 years of age osmosis is common in about 60% of cases. Since I, like most people, need to be able to sell the boat at some stage to recover some funds, what is your advice? My view at present is I cannot trust GRP as I cannot be certain of the build quality in a second hand boat even with a survey. So using that logic steel appears to be my main option as what you see is what you get. Am I over petrified about GRP? Best Regards, Martin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hi Martin: There are good and bad boats out of all materials–steel, aluminum, and GRP included. With steel you have the advantages you’ve mentioned–toughness, ease of repair, offset by rust and maintenance. Rust, especially if the boat is not built correctly and traps moisture–can be a major issue. With GRP osmosis is always a potential problem. But it is one which can be quantified, and in most cases dealt with. There is a cost, but if you find a problem at the time of survey–and a good surveyor will find the problems if he is thorough–the osmosis can be dealt with in most cases. The cost can be substantial, but that is negotiated between you and the seller. There are also issues with bulkhead bonding, hullto deck joints, and general scantlings (including keel floors). From our perspective we’d have no concerns about going to see in a well built GRP hull. But if it was a choice between an inexpensive, high production volume cruiser–designed for local sailing (although marketed for cruising offshore) and a lower finish quality but sturdy steel hull–we’d chose the rock crusher (metal). So, it comes down to the type of fiberglass construction and its condition. Done well, in good condition, there’s no reason not to use the GRP. Regards–Steve Dashew<\/p>\n

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Hi Steve, Firstly thanks for the books, most of which are bending my shelves. I am looking for my first …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yacht-construction-forum","category-tech-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36020,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/36020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}