Sailfish problems......

[Bryan A.]

Found this on sportfishermen.com.

Sailfish Cracking

I had a frind of mine with a Polar go through the same problems. Apparently after going back and forth with laweys and such the boat is being repaired this winter. I still need to see how it comes out for his Polar.

That 2 year old sailfish deck looks like th one on my 73 20SF.

[Captainkass]

Hello as any person who owns boats can tell you, these are called stress cracks, they occur on most all boats, due to various things such as running at high speeds and hitting waves, wave jumping,any kind of pounding sea will cause this, You can have these cracks repaired for a bunch of money or try to do it your self ( Which i suggest) But ultimitly they will reapper, it a fact!!! the only way to not get these cracks is to not run your boat, but what fun would that be. So good luck, but just know that you are not alone. regards kevin

[Bryan A.]

The difference is that boat is 2 years old.

My Parker is 5 years old and has almost no stress cracks.
My 1973 20SF is another story.

[76Red18]

I bet no 2 year old SeaCraft ever had stress cracks. I say structural failure, probably liner- stringer detachment. I saw some pics with cracks on the deck radiating out from a point. Has to be from impact;liner to stringer contact.
We se these cracks on our older boats because of structural failure due to the many impacts from waves over a long period and moisture weakened coreing

[bigeasy1]

All i can say,is that i'd be pretty pssd off, if i had a two year old boat with that many stress cracks.The 74 Tsunami i'm restoring does'nt have anywhere close to that many.

I also have a 1985 22' Trophy which is an entry level inexpensive boat,and it has very very few stress cracks,and i don't baby this boat.It's taken more than it's share of rough water pounding.
It's in better shape than that 2 year old high priced Sailfish.

[gofastsandman]

I have an `89 Tracker hull. I have VERY few stress cracks. My hull was laid up in November, which is a good thing in Fl. A lot of it has to do w/ the happiness/ competence of the crew doing the work. I was on an early Jupiter 31 which shuddered like a cold, wet dog, causing stress cracks and worse.
It seems the Bahamian foreman didn`t get the raise he thought he deserved after the first few production hulls and decided to "Bayliner" the owners for the slight. They didn`t pick up on it for a few hulls.......

Those cracks are in VERY strange places!


Best guess,
1 liner not supported evenly, or properly.

2 repeat as necessary.

Thx,
GFS

[jobu]

I agree with Capnkass...I read the whole thread from Saltwater S'man to Sailfishforum and no-one mentioned the posibility of hard core abuse. All it would have taken is a really hard landing jumping a wake or similar to crack a stringer or support underneith the console. Once there is a defect like this...it will only get worse and the stress cracks will spread rapidly. I cracked two hulls when I was young and stupid and its really easy to be in denial over it. Sailfisf makes a pretty nice boat but they're not bullet proof.
joe

[JohnB]

I saw something simular to that in Florida last year. It wasn't a Sailfish, but I won't name the manufacture.
Some manufactures are "glueing" the stringers to the hull. I forgot what kind of glue it is, metho.... something. Anyways, the boat I saw, the stringers detached from hull on both sides, and one of them, you could slide you hand under it . This boat had stress cracks similar to the pictures here, and they ran the length of the boat, mostly on the liner, where the stringer had become a battering ram into the bottom of the liner, and stressed cracked it the whole length. Amazingly, there only a couple of minor stress cracks in the hull, on the outside, but on the inside, alot of the gelcoat had cracked away, and the bilge pump was choke with a lot of debris.

I am not sure you could pound a sailfish that hard, and not rip the t-top right out, and pound the occupants to death. Generally, they are pretty solid boats. I would pop an access plate, and see if the stringers are attached to the hull and the liner, and if there is any debris in the bilge. That kind of damage is going to start sheading stuff into the bilge.

[spareparts]

i worked for a dealer that handled Sea Craft from 99-01, we dropped the line for various reasons, one of them being the amount of gel cracks that were visable in the non skid and the corners. The gel cracks were showing up before the boats were even sold, each one had less than 20 hours of demo time on them. we really looked for the cause and determined it was not a true structural failure, nothing broke, nothing came loose, the boats were still in one piece. the issue was, that SeaCraft used so much gel to achieve the aggresive nonskid pattern, it was cracking due to flex in flat areas. How much was it flexing? Not enough to see with the eye. Remember, gel is not structural, its just there as a filler and top coat, its extremmly brittle. Fiberglass resin will crack if it is set up alone, add some type of mat to it, and its super strong and rigid. SeaCraft, as are many other manufactures are building boats using many composites, trying to make their boats light and efficient. Composites don't soak up the bumps like wood will, and transfer a lot of these stresses to other areas of the boat( usually corners or large flat areas). Would i be mad if my 2 year old baot was developing stress cracks? Yes, with out a doubt. but does it look like major structural issue, not likely. I see a lot of boats(new ones) that have simular stress cracks, the common denominator in these boats is they are usually composite, higher peformace, upper middle line boats that use a lot of gel to get that diamond nonskid pattern. there are some that use the nonskid pattern with out the cracks, but they are geneally tanks(Whaler,Grady), that use their weight to an advantage. there are a lot of light weights out there that use paint, not gel to prevent visable cracks. Ive repaired a lot of boats that had cracks, and when I sanded them down to raw glass, i saw no signs of structual damage to the glass. When repaied tehm, i didn't lay a lot of gel on the repaired areas, and they usually didn't come back. just my .02

[Ikan Besar]

I bet no 2 year old SeaCraft ever had stress cracks.

I've been on four MONTH old SeaCraft's with stress cracks. As mentioned above, one really hard landing or very rough day can twist things just enough to create some cracks - not worrisome cracks but visually unappealing.