> (if all goes well) Our family, is about to become the proud owners of
> a corsair 24 mkI. One of the reasons we are buying it is that these
> boats (corsairs in general) are supposed to be of high quality.
> surely the resail value reflects that (we hope). But just how long,
> should we realistically expect this boat to last? yes sails blow out
> and rigging wears out, as does winches and moving parts, nets
> deteriorate and we expect all that. but how many more years can we
> expect out of an already 12 year old hull,amas, and beams? 10? 20?
> what about that aluminum mast? We do plan on taking care of it best
> we can! will this boat outlast the loan?
I believe fiberglass production boats have been around since 1958. Years ago
there was an article in Yachting magazine on this subject. It seems the US
Navy bought a few small early fiberglass shore boats for the fleet. The
boats were used on Lake Eire at the time when it was considered the most
polluted body of water in the country. The navy was skeptical about the use
of fiberglass as a boat building material so they had steel beams running
fore and aft installed. Like wearing a belt with suspenders! Twenty years
later they had one foot square sections removed from the bottom and sent to
a testing lab. The fiberglass sections proved to be stronger then when the
boat was originally built. There are still some very old sailboats sailing
around that had less then the best care in their life and are still
seaworthy.
I thing the secret of designing a very good multihull boat is to make it
strong but most important to make it light. I got in a collision with my
first sailboat during a race many years ago. The boat was a Cal-24 designed
by C William Lapworth in 1960.The stem on this boat was over 3" thick! The
boat that hit me was a Schock 25. His bow had a hole the size of a softball
, my boat had a little of the teak trim damaged.
Enough rattling on. Ian's boats have been around since the 70's and are
still going strong.
Marv
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