I looked at a 1982 Hughes 40 for sale yesterday that seemed like a good deal. The owner provided a survey from a reputable surveyor which showed well for the boats age. I checked over the boat thoroughly and went for a sail yesterday. Everything was great until I asked to see under the floorboards. They are screwed down and the table needs to be moved to access this area which is probably why the surveyor didn't pick this up. The floor supports, which are also the tank supports, are completely rotted and there is a soft spot in the floor. This area is around the mast step but the mast step and surrounding structure seems to be perfectly sound. The rot is in plywood that was not properly protected. I believe these are just the water tanks (total of 180 gal) but I'm not sure about the condition of holding and fuel tanks. The picture below shows the centre tank but there are two others outboard of this either side. I'm pretty sure the owner didn't have any idea about this.
@SloopDogg was working on a similar project lately. Anyone have an order of magnitude of the number of hours it would take to fix this issue? I'm trying to get an idea if it's worth taking on a job like this. As I mentioned above, other than this the boat is quite good and may still be worth the effort with a bit of price reduction.
@SloopDogg was working on a similar project lately. Anyone have an order of magnitude of the number of hours it would take to fix this issue? I'm trying to get an idea if it's worth taking on a job like this. As I mentioned above, other than this the boat is quite good and may still be worth the effort with a bit of price reduction.
