Trojan Boat Forum

I was crawling around on the port side of my port engine on my 1978 F-32 and there is a stiffener that runs perpendicular to the engine mount stringer along the hull and out to the hull-side stiffener plywood. I happened to hit this small 15" long x 8" tall x 1.5" wide stringer with a tool and it sounded hollow. I poked around and this stringer is open on the top meaning the fiberglass is lapped up the sides and the top is exposed unlike on the rest of the boat. This stringer is directly below the side bilge vent on the port side. I poked around and found the wood was rotted only in this little stringer on the whole boat. I then did a thorough check under all limber holes I could get to in the boat and used a hammer to listen for soft spots and found no others.

Has anyone found this on their F-32? This is an odd spot for rot as it is no where near where the water is found typically in these boats. This area is bone dry all the time. The starboard side did not have this issue.

My surveyor when I bought the boat who is not affiliated with the marina where I bought it was amazed that the boat did not have any stringer rot but I'm sure he would not have checked this area because you need to be quite small to get back there. believe me I had fun getting out of that area.

With this not being a major support for the boat what would you forum members suggest for the repair?

If you don't want to do the complete stringer replacement...... What I did with a similar issue:

Remove all the bad wood.

Dry the wood that is left thoroughly

Treat with CPES penetrating epoxy

Start backfilling with low viscosity Non Blushing, Cycloaliphatic epoxy to seal the wood

Build up the area with white oak

fill with medium viscosity epoxy

complete with thickened epoxy and glass in

drill adjacent wood areas with 1/4 drill, insert Impel rods (sodium octoborate) to prevent wood rot from starting in future

this has me worried.

i thought that trojans were infamous for NOT having any kind of stringer rot.

while mine appear fine (have never poked at them or hit on them to do a close inspection), i think i may have to do some poking around this weekend.

good luck with this!

if it aint broke, dont fix,,,,,lol

Safari wrote:If you don't want to do the complete stringer replacement...... What I did with a similar issue:

Remove all the bad wood.

Dry the wood that is left thoroughly

Treat with CPES penetrating epoxy

Start backfilling with low viscosity Non Blushing, Cycloaliphatic epoxy to seal the wood

Build up the area with white oak

fill with medium viscosity epoxy

complete with thickened epoxy and glass in

drill adjacent wood areas with 1/4 drill, insert Impel rods (sodium octoborate) to prevent wood rot from starting in future

Question... when I was researching the CPES route I thought that one could dry the rotten wood area and apply CPES without digging out bad wood. Is this not correct or did you just prefer to remove it and replace with new wood?
http://www.rotdoctor.com/products/cpes.html

I have owned a woody for many years and have done similar repairs different ways. I have found 2 things: repaired rotted wood does not have the structural integrity of repaired with good wood. The 2nd thing is: if you remove all the rotted wood you can, you will still have rotten wood that you haven't seen yet. That is why I recommend the Impel rods also. The way the limber holes were drilled in these boats, I don't see how you could not have some wet stringer issues..........

Tuck wrote:this has me worried.
i thought that trojans were infamous for NOT having any kind of stringer rot.

And I had heard that Trojans have soft decks and stringers as potential problems.

what's a limber hole and where can I get one?

Limber holes are passages that allow the water to pass beneath the stringer and find its way to the bow or stern of the boat where the bilge pumps are. In most trojans especially the F-32, the limber holes were not fiberglassed in so there is bare wood under the stringer where the water can pass under the stringer. In cases where there is a lot of water in the bilge, the unprotected wood in the limber hole can act like a sponge and over time this causes dry rot. I know of at least three F-32's that are in the early 1970's that have had to replace the stingers from the v-berth back to under the enginges. Not easy to do and very expensive.

When or if you find this condition it is like the diagnosis of cancer. You get a sick feeling in your stomach until you find out how extensive it is. In my case I think I can be cured or at least live another 20 years or so on the water.

But once you get over the sick feeling in the gut, and do the repair, it makes you appreciate good wood. Mine was a little more extensive than some.

Here is a picture of the new wood dry fitted to the hull.

Mac32,

Since you had all that open how does one get under the head to replace loose bolts holding down the head? Can you get at it from the starboard side of the head with the wall removed or does one have to come in from V berth locker?

ready123 wrote:Mac32,

Since you had all that open how does one get under the head to replace loose bolts holding down the head? Can you get at it from the starboard side of the head with the wall removed or does one have to come in from V berth locker?

Remove the wall like I have shown in the picture. If I recall the wall adjacent to the vberth locker is glassed down to the hull (like bulkhead) and does not have access under the head.

The wall comes off easily with exception I had to use a razor to cut the shower liner glued down to the inside walls of the head. By the way this is some super glue stuff, I gave up removing it when it started splitting the wood on removal.

The only rot I have found on mine is the piece of wood that runs down the bottm of the hull on the outside of the hull just above the water line. Don't know what it's purpose is but the end of it is rotted and filled with epoxy

It's here in the picture.

That's the splash rail, I just replaced both mine last weekend with white oak, on the 30ft sport fisherman it was a job to remove and put back took me two days to do it I used the old one's for a template. A neighbor that worked in a marina told me it was a $2,000.00 job there (labor intensive) I have $50.00 in it and about 23 hrs.

Dan Faith wrote:That's the splash rail, I just replaced both mine last weekend with white oak, on the 30ft sport fisherman it was a job to remove and put back took me two days to do it I used the old one's for a template. A neighbor that worked in a marina told me it was a $2,000.00 job there (labor intensive) I have $50.00 in it and about 23 hrs.

Don't you have to remove the bolts from the inside? Why is it so labor intensive? Did you do it with the boat in the water?