Minimizing drying during extended haul-out

[robbid]

We need to keep our 33' cutter on land this summer and I'd like to minimize the drying of the hull. We already have some checking in the stem and the horn timber, which I've filled, as much as possible, with Slickseam (wax). We'll keep the sun off with a loose reflective cover. The hull is eastern cedar over white oak. Suggestions?

[cybulski]

all summer huh? moisture in the bilge would help, i had a friend who sprayed his with water for about an hour, every couple of days. Just dont close it off where it cant breathe. You dont want stagnant water causing mold, or worse.

[Lew Barrett]

Try wrapping the bottom in burlap sacks, starting at the waterline. You should staple a soaker hose under the burlap, also starting at the wl. Run the hose as much as needed to help reduce the problem. That's about it.

[StevenBauer]

You don't say where you are located but as long as it isn't Arizona or Texas you'll probably be fine. Before we bought Talisman she was on the hard for 3 or 4 years. No drying out problems.


Steven

[Bob Cleek]

If it is on dirt anywhere near the water (i.e. not the middle of the desert someplace), there shouldn't be any problem. She'll open up a litte bit, and she'll close back up when she goes back in. Boats are like that.

I really don't know what this recent obsession with "drying out" and "swelling up" is about these days. I guess there's just a lot of people who never have been around wooden boats much before they went out and bought one.

If you are worried about your boat "drying out" when she is on the hard for a few months (or years), consider this: Are your topsides under water all the time? No, of course not. Day in and day out the sun beats down on them. Do your topside seams shrink measureably when you aren't there flowing water from a "soaker hose" down them all day long? No, of course not.

Don't sweat it. Not to worry. Okay?

[Lew Barrett]

Just to make my position clear, I have, as requested, provided the most efficient technique for slowing drying in hot weather. I haven't felt the need to use it myself. In a hot, windy climate over asphalt, a boat can dry with remarkable speed. If you are concerned about checking, the burlap and soaker hose solution is the most efficient for a short duration haul out.

A good boat that is out of the water for a month will dry about as much as it reasonably is going to. It may not even need that much time depending on conditions. A boat that has been laid out on concrete uncovered for ten years and has dried and expanded over a decade with no attention paid and no thought given isn't a boat; it's a restoration project. People shouldn't make the error of mistaking one for the other.

[redbopeep]

We had our boat out of the water for 2 years 7 months in dry, dry San Diego. The first 11 months she was on asphalt in a shed that was more like a carport and located about a mile inland at a relatively hot location. At that location, we weren't really able to wet down the boat or the asphalt with regularity but were advised by the owner of the yard to either coat things with Smith's CPES OR to coat wood monthly with a boat sauce mix (Stockholm tar, BLO, Turps mix). We ended up using boat sauce on the old wood which clearly had had a similar treatment in the past and using CPES to seal new wood put into the boat. We did use boat sauce on large scantling purpleheart that was new for the countertimber and stem, too.

The boat sauce and the CPES seemed to work well on new wood to keep moisture but we really didn't notice it helping the existing wood keel and deadwood much.

After we moved the boat to the second yard, we had more control of the environment. We were about 8 miles inland in a valley along the San Diego river. Fairly hot and dry location though not anything like the further inland and desert locations in San Diego county. The boat was on a gravel/dirt surface that we kept fairly wet and we also put up a white tent around the boat with an aluminet shade cloth top so hot air could rise out. We used a greenhouse fogger to manage both the temperature and the humidity and found that we were able to increase the MC of the wood from 11%-12% (as it had dried to at the first yard) to 13%-14% for the remainder of the project. Further, when the temperature in the rest of the boatyard was in the low 90's, it was in the low 80's under our boat in the enclosure. Often other workers and boat owners would stop in and cool down under our boat as we were the coolest location in the yard :)

We did not keep water in the keel--though sometimes if fresh water got there with the rain we'd pump it out. Anytime a crack would open up in the keel or deadwood, we would immediately stuff it full of Dolfinite/Dolphinite to prevent further drying and with the hope that the soft filler material would spit out when the boat took up water.

Once we painted the keel and deadwood wood with red lead primer at about the 16 month point, it immediately started swelling with the moisture in the environment (provided by the fogger) and actually started spitting out the Dolfinite filling the cracks. The filler squeezed out slowly over the remainder of the project and I'd scrape it off from time to time and repaint it with red lead until she was ready for bottom paint. Now that she's back in the water, we suspect the filler will soon be completely squeezed back out of all those cracks.

We would not have been quite so paranoid about moisture content of the boat and wood except we were replanking the boat and it was our goal to work with planking stock at about 14% MC and to keep the boat about the same. Whe obtained the planking stock from Port Townsend, WA at about 14% MC. Our method of keeping the MC constant allowed us to more confidently use the tight planking outgage spec'd originally for the boat when she was built on the east coast (near Boston) rather than going with a much larger outgage as most San Diego builders do.

Other folks around here who are storing or working on wood boats have noted--don't take the paint off the boat as long as possible and get new paint back on there quickly. This really helps with the MC. Also, keeping a shade cloth over the boat or having the boat in an enclosure really helps. Finally, if we were NOT replanking, we'd have likely done something like Lew suggests to keep things moist.

Hope this information is somewhat helpful to you. Good luck in your project.

[robbid]

Thanks for these suggestions. I'm relieved to hear that this is manageable.
I've been anxious about this both because I already have some checking, as I mentioned, and from a discussion with a boatbuilder in RI. I knew of an older (1930's) Alden sloop there that was in the water vitually year-round and remaining quite tight, which he had worked on, and he thought it would come apart (planks pulling from frames) if it were to dry out. I think the problem may have been old fastenings which he felt wouldn't hold with the movement of the wood shrinking.

We're covering the boat loosely, with ventilation, with a reflective cover, and I'll continue to wet her down when I water the garden.