Removing Foam Blocks from Javelin

[gmurray1113]

Hello, new to the site and sailing (since sunfish as a boy scout anyways). We bought a 1973 Javelin this weekend, had a bunch of water in it, got all that out and it still felt really heavy. I started pulling out some of the foam blocks and found them to be waterlogged. I got as many as I could out. We will be using this in small lakes in New Hampshire, any need to replace any of the flotation? Also wondering if I sail this solo, should I be able to upright the boat after a capsize by myself (I weigh about 160lbs)?

Thanks

Geoff

 

[Brian S]

It all depends. As with many boats, if you capsize them, they could take on enough water to sink, or maybe sit low enough so the top of the centerboard trunk is below water, and therefore impossible to bail out. Some boats such at the Flying Scot, have the seats molded such that she will not take on water as long as the mast tip stays on the surface of the water.

I have seen a skinnier woman than 160 pounds right a Flying Scot laying on her beam with a mast head float.

You might need to have a righting line tied to the mast, or perhaps bring a jib sheet over the high side to hang on while walking out the centerboard.

Get a friend with a powerboat to go out with you and practice near a sandy lee shore when the winds are light.

Brian

 

[Sunbird22358]

With a 49# galvanized-steel centerboard and proper care in sailing, I don't think your will capsize...... going over is possible, but NOT inevitable.
ALWAYS sail with the mainsheet in your hand, use the camcleat to hold the tension, but keep the mainsheet in your hand. That way if you get hit by a gust of wind, you can easily and quickly realease the mainsheet to spill the wind and 99.9999999% of the time, avoid a capsize. Doing this has allowed me to have sailed a WIDGEON for 8 years and a DS II (replaced the Widgeon) for 17 years with only a couple of "scares", but never a capsize. Spilling the wind from the mainsail has always brought her back upright before she came close to going over. Adding a tiller extension that lets me sit on hte windward rail also helped as did adding a set of reefpoints to the sail (original roller-reefing setup on boom never really worked for me, even though I did have the required reefing claw to reattach the mainsheet after rolling in the reef.)

I would try to replace the foam, especially if this is were an older (prior to 1971) JAVELIN with a non-self-bailing cockpit. The newer ones, like your 1973 model, built since 1971 are less dependant on flotation due to the molded-in cockpit, although... I'd still want the foam flotation for safety. Some owners of older Day Sailers (DS I) have added pool noodles inside the seats to bolster the original flotation after removing soggy foam.

There may still be water trapped between hte hull and deck, leaving the boat for a week or so with the tongue of the trailer jacked up high and hte bilge drain plug open (screw-in plug on lower,outside of transom) may help, leave the hatch open to the under-deck compartment too, if the "deck" inside that compartment is plywood it may have rotted and allowed water to collect or the plywood may be saturated with water adding weight.

 

[H J J]

Hello, new to the site and sailing (since sunfish as a boy scout anyways). We bought a 1973 Javelin this weekend, had a bunch of water in it, got all that out and it still felt really heavy. I started pulling out some of the foam blocks and found them to be waterlogged. I got as many as I could out. We will be using this in small lakes in New Hampshire, any need to replace any of the flotation? Also wondering if I sail this solo, should I be able to upright the boat after a capsize by myself (I weigh about 160lbs)?

Thanks

Geoff

For buoyancy, you could fill the voids with ball pits balls, like where kids play at McDonalds. In the event of a capsize, they would prevent the voids from filling with water.

 

[Brian S]

I've never understood folk's fascination with pool noodles, beach balls, etc. I get this from the kayaking world of skin on frame kayaks, where there is no inherent buoyancy created by storage compartments as in a fiberglass sea kayak - the SOF boat is open throughout the length. Rather than making (or buying) floatation bags for an SOF, folks talk about stuffing pool noodles inside, etc. For my mind, a pool noodle or small balls, or partially inflated beach balls wouldn't be as good as a floatation bag. In between all the buoyancy of a pool noodle, there are voids which will fill with water. But with a proper floatation bag, all the interior volume is filled by the inflated bag, with a significantly greater volume of air, displacing all the water. So I think float bags are much more effective (especially with kayaks.)

As for boats, my wood GP14 came with 5 floatation bags fitted: a huge one in the bow under the foredeck, 2 long skinny ones under the side seats, and two bigger ones fitted aft of the seats going under the after deck. That's a lot of buoyancy.

If one has soggy foam in a boat, I would remove as much as possible, to get rid of the mildew breeding grounds. Then I would make a reasonable assessment of future water ingress potential - in a compartment that is likely to fill with water, I might cut new chunks of polystyrene closed cell foam to fill in as tightly as possible. But if there isn't much chance of having a lot of water in the area repeatedly, e.g. in an enclosed compartment, I think I'd just buy some 2 part polyurethane expanding foam, and pour that in there and allow it to foam up, sealing the space fully. It would prevent volumes of water pooling inside, and would provide the maximum amount of buoyant volume.

On an interesting note, the house next door to mine has lots of crumbling pointing in between the bricks. The yahoo fixing the house up has seen fit to squirt expanding foam (weatherstripping foam) into the pointing. A) that's not structural, and B) it now looks like bubbled-out-amber-foam a$$... That pointing needs to be ground out and have new mortar trowled in.

Brian