1975 S2 8.0A: Bolt deflection in cabin bulkhead?
Hey, I'm a fairly novice sailor (right at a year now) and looking into buying my first boat. Today I went to see a 1975 S2 8.0A and it really looked like it was perfect for what my wife and I want -- mostly day sailing and the occasional overnight or weekend trip on the Intracostal Waterway on the central east coast of Florida.
Anyway, I wonder if someone might be able to tell me if something I saw on this boat is an indication of a problem, or just typical wear on a boat this age. I noticed some deflection in some bolts coming out of the bulkhead located under the mast area. If I understand correctly, there's an athwartship beam running under the mast to transfer the load to two posts on either side of the cabin and down from there. The bolts (or rather, the nuts attached to them really) were in the position that appears to be where the transition from that athwartship beam would attach to the two vertical beams (forgive my lack of proper terminology, again I'm very new to all this). I wonder if this might be an indication that the posts or the beam are sagging or otherwise not correctly carrying the load of the mast? This was with the boat docked, and without any main sail on the mast at all.
Here's a shot of what I'm talking about where you can see two of them. The item between them is the fastener for securing the table when it is folded up, if that helps you with a better of idea of what area I'm talking about. It looks a little more pronounced in person because I didn't take the shot directly from the side, but you can see how the washers are out and away from the bulkhead on the bottom, and completely sunken into it on the top.
This was the only thing I could really find that caused any concern at all for me, although as I mentioned before I hardly have much experience at this. The asking price is very, very affordable for me, but if this is an indication that I'm going to need to have the interior ripped up in order to repair this load bearing system, I'm definitely less interested in it than I am now.
Edit: After poking around on another S2 8.0 website, it looks like there is a significant difference between the 8.0A, which only had a 40 hull run, and the 8.0B which had over 400. The 8.0B seems to have a bulkhead that comes all the way to the center of the boat and the opening to the head and V berth is entirely on the other side of that. My guess is that this configuration allows for a single compression post to be mounted directly under the mast? With the 8.0A the opening is almost dead center under the mast, meaning there can't be a compression post directly under the mast. I wonder if this turned out to be a very bad design choice and that's why they almost immediately switched it out with the 8.0B design after only 40 hulls? Or perhaps the design was sound, but it just cost more to build them that way and so they switched to a simpler method?
Any info, tips, suggestions, etc would be most welcome.
--Brad
Hey, I'm a fairly novice sailor (right at a year now) and looking into buying my first boat. Today I went to see a 1975 S2 8.0A and it really looked like it was perfect for what my wife and I want -- mostly day sailing and the occasional overnight or weekend trip on the Intracostal Waterway on the central east coast of Florida.
Anyway, I wonder if someone might be able to tell me if something I saw on this boat is an indication of a problem, or just typical wear on a boat this age. I noticed some deflection in some bolts coming out of the bulkhead located under the mast area. If I understand correctly, there's an athwartship beam running under the mast to transfer the load to two posts on either side of the cabin and down from there. The bolts (or rather, the nuts attached to them really) were in the position that appears to be where the transition from that athwartship beam would attach to the two vertical beams (forgive my lack of proper terminology, again I'm very new to all this). I wonder if this might be an indication that the posts or the beam are sagging or otherwise not correctly carrying the load of the mast? This was with the boat docked, and without any main sail on the mast at all.
Here's a shot of what I'm talking about where you can see two of them. The item between them is the fastener for securing the table when it is folded up, if that helps you with a better of idea of what area I'm talking about. It looks a little more pronounced in person because I didn't take the shot directly from the side, but you can see how the washers are out and away from the bulkhead on the bottom, and completely sunken into it on the top.
This was the only thing I could really find that caused any concern at all for me, although as I mentioned before I hardly have much experience at this. The asking price is very, very affordable for me, but if this is an indication that I'm going to need to have the interior ripped up in order to repair this load bearing system, I'm definitely less interested in it than I am now.
Edit: After poking around on another S2 8.0 website, it looks like there is a significant difference between the 8.0A, which only had a 40 hull run, and the 8.0B which had over 400. The 8.0B seems to have a bulkhead that comes all the way to the center of the boat and the opening to the head and V berth is entirely on the other side of that. My guess is that this configuration allows for a single compression post to be mounted directly under the mast? With the 8.0A the opening is almost dead center under the mast, meaning there can't be a compression post directly under the mast. I wonder if this turned out to be a very bad design choice and that's why they almost immediately switched it out with the 8.0B design after only 40 hulls? Or perhaps the design was sound, but it just cost more to build them that way and so they switched to a simpler method?
Any info, tips, suggestions, etc would be most welcome.
--Brad
