I personally know of 4 V-20’s in S. Florida that busted up with cracks in the hull and have heard 2nd hand reports of a couple more. The V-20 which had significant cracks after a rough gulf stream crossing with Reiland and I that Capt. Terry mentioned belonged to a mutual friend. Although I had a few screws come loose on my Seafari, he had significant damage in addition to a 4’ hull crack. His saddle tanks broke loose at the welds, he had a crack in the cabin bulkhead and his seats had disintegrated! Reiland’s Moesly 21 had zero problems as usual. I knew of at least one V-20 with a hull crack where the owner just painted the bottom and sold it, so I would NEVER buy one that had bottom paint on it!
Another colleague that had a V-20 also had a Phd in engineering, so of course Dr. Marv took his apart to determine cause of failure! He found several problems:
1. The bottom of the plywood stringers were cut off square at 90 degrees instead of being cut at an angle to match the hull dead-rise. This created a sharp edge for the hull to flex around.
2. The glass wasn’t wrapped over the top of the stringer, but was just tabs between the hull and sides of the stringer.
3. They apparently did not use enough resin to thoroughly saturate the wood where the tabs were located. The laminate was fairly dry; most of the resin had evidently soaked into the wood away from the glass. Result was that the stringers had broken loose from the tabbing and were just flopping around loose in the hull!
Regarding the hull design, Dr. Marv said that most of the flare in the bow is in about the top 4-6 inches of the hull so it doesn’t have much reserve buoyancy. The result is that when he punched into a big head sea at slow speed or a following sea at any speed, he had several inches green water come over the bow, up the windshield and over the navy top into the back of the boat! I never had green water come over the deck of my Seafari, although I was out diving a few times in seas up to 5’.
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