On Sunday, July 28, 2019 04:49:58 PM dsigno01@... [sunfish_sailor] wrote:
My mini sunfish has taken on a great deal of added weight. I took off the
plug and drained a ton of water out of it but it is still too heavy for me
to drag from the water onto my beach. Any ideas why this is happening and
any ideas for a solution? I tried putting 2 sets of skateboards down wheel
side up and rolling the boat over them- which worked for a couple of
years- but now even that¡¯s not working!
The basic problem is that the foam in the hull gradually absorbs water over
the years that will not drain out -- you have to basically evaporate it.
You can find various suggestions as to how to do that on this list or the file
section of this list, one approach is to cut inspection ports in both ends of
the deck (such that you can install a reclosable port over them eventually)
and then do something like turn the hull upside down, put it in a fairly warm
location (perhaps exposed to the sun) and then run a small fan (I've used a 12
volt fan as is used in (home) computer cooling applications) to move air
through the hull.
It may take up to a year to get enough water out to get the weight down to
(almost) the original weight.
You don't want to pull the hull apart and try to replace the foam, although it
could be done, it is a difficult job.
