Blisters on a 1989 38-200

Goodmorning everyone,

I have been working to remove the 21 years of bottom paint from the hull of my 1989 38-200. I noticed some bumps in the bottom paint a while back, and decided to strip it all off and have a look at the extent of the problem. After intense scraping and sanding, the bottom was finally revealed, and it shows thousands of small pea sized bumps covering most of the hull. I have sanded the entire hull smooth which opened up a few of the little buggers, and I popped a few more with a dental pick. No fluid came out of any of them, and the gel coat chipped off dry, with apparently dry laminate behind. I originally felt that maybe Ericsons primer coat had bubbled. and formed paint blisters, but I couldnt get that lucky.

Like I said, I have sanded them smooth and the bumps have been cut down flush with the hull and is smooth to the touch. I'm aware that voids will still exist behind these areas, but short of removing all the gelcoat, I dont see what I can do about it. Repairing each one individually would take the rest of my life, and I'm 39....

My plan right now is to test the hull with a moisture meter, and see if any moisture is detected inside, and perhaps do a percussion sounding of the hull to try to find voids. If all goes well with the moisture meter, and hammer, I'm thinking of barrier coating and painting and seeing what happens. I figure that by barrier coating, it will prevent any further moisture from making the situation worse. Even if the bumps come back, they will at least be sealed. I certainly dont want to trap any existing water in though either. Does this sound like a reasonable plan? (Remember....one of you may want to buy this boat someday in the distant future.... )

Some have said, just paint it and go, and see what happens, but I'm afraid that will make things worse by allowing water to contact these areas and enlarging the blisters. I lost my job as a pilot several months ago, and dont want to put any more money into this, this year, than I have to, but at the same time, I dont want to be foolish and have the issue get worse, especially since I have gone through extreme labor in removing the bottom paint. I know painting one or 2 coats with ablaitive paint would be much easier to remove in the future for a repair, but I really hate to go through this again.

Any experiences with this problem on other 80's Ericsons, and solutions that anyone tried? Some say the gelcoat blisters are cosmetic only and I should just live with them, but I just am worried about making the situation worse, especially since they have now all been abraded by sanding, making the surface more pourous.

Thanks for any insights anyone can offer....

Todd

ps. Another sanding took place yesterday (4/1) to remove left over paint residue. There are less dark spots now than in the pics. Forgot to take new ones.....these are after completion of the first sanding where 99% of the paint has been removed. Yesterday was detail sanding to remove the small spots left over....probobly wasnt needed, but it made me feel better and gave me something to focus on...



Some of the larger dark spots seen here are where I removed primer coat down to the gel coat. Not always where a bump existed.... The primer is white and chalky, the first coat applied at the factory was red....the rest was all blue.



The boot stripe and cove stripe were red when we bought her 7 years ago. We changed the color to blue and added a white waterline stripe. The waterline of the paint was moved up about 1", especially at the bow because she was always sitting low in the bow due to the forward water tank. The waterline was vastly different from where the factory placed it. I figure...in all, about 300 lbs of paint chips were removed from the hull. Perhaps this will make a small difference. Where RED is seen in the pictures, is where bottom paint was removed from the waterline. The top of the bottom paint was flush with the white stripe....







This picture shows the starboard waterline, about midship. The brighter white is the primer coat applied at the factory. The blisters were pushing up through the primer coat. When the blisters are sanded smooth, they are flush or receeded slightly from the primer coat and look darker than the surrounding primer, because they are gelcoat surface without primer on them which appears darker. A dental pick to these spots chips off the gelcoat revealing the small void.....I'm thinking that several coats of barrier will fill the tiny voids....??

We struggled with blisters on our 1989 E38-200 too. As with yours our boat had thousands of tiny blisters that seemed to just be between the gel coat and laminate, with just water in them, and nothing going into the laminate. So we weren't worried about the structural integrity of the hull, but we figured we ought to go ahead and get them fixed anyway. So the second year we owned her (1995) we paid to have the hull peeled and coated with West System epoxy. Which promptly blistered too. So it was peeled a second time to remove all the epoxy, and then recoated. That second application blistered too, but somewhat less. So just about every year between 1997 and 2004 (when we sold her) part of the hull was spot repaired to remove a few more blisters. The folks at West System (Gougeon Brothers) down the street inspected the boat to try and figure out why all the repairs failed, and the best they could suggest was that the layup was somewhat starved for resin, allowing for capillary action that kept causing the coating to lift. The only real fix was probably to peel her again, and this time take off a good layer of laminate too, to be replaced with new cloth.

When she was hauled in the fall of 2004 for a pre-purchase survey the blisters had become worse, so we had to give back $5000 to the new owner to help him pay for future repairs as part of the sale. Not sure what (if anything) the new owner did, so I dont' know if his repair worked either.

So my advice after all this? Put some barrier coat on it and just go sailing. The blisters will get worse, but just keep an eye on them to be sure that nothing structural develops (which I am fairly sure it will not). Eventually you are going to have to deal with this at resale, or accept a lower price to allow for repairs. But I don't think you are going to exacerbate the situation by ignoring it for now. And if your hull was anything like ours (#324 IIRC?) nothing you do will work anyway!

Hey Steve, I thought I remembered reading something of your plight a long while ago, but couldnt find the thread. I guess I should have looked further. Thanks for the info on your boat. Ours is hull #308. You have to wonder....the very next year as we all know, Ericson was taken over by Pacific Seacraft, which makes one think...where they skimping a bit on resin to save a few bucks in a bad time? I wonder if the later models have had any of this trouble that the late 80's boats have had, after P.S. took over the builds....hmmm. Doesent matter now anyway, the problem is there.

So, you think I should put the barrier coat on and not just bottom paint and see what happens? I dont want to trap any moisture in, but I dont want to let any more in either, so I'm leaning in that direction as well, but I guess I have to wait and see what my friends moisture meter says. I'm going to go get it now, and see what is what. I'll add more on that later, but thanks for relaying your experience with this. I'm so surprised that even West system failed as a cure. Rebuilding laminate would be a huge nightmare as well....so I hope it does not come to that. We have owned her for 7 years, and I would like to think she will be around for much much longer with us, so I dont want to sweep it under the rug for too long either....but the costs might outweigh the benefits for sure.

Todd

Fill 'em and paint it.

oceandreams89 said:

Hey Steve, I thought I remembered reading something of your plight a long while ago, but couldnt find the thread. I guess I should have looked further. Thanks for the info on your boat. Ours is hull #308. You have to wonder....the very next year as we all know, Ericson was taken over by Pacific Seacraft, which makes one think...where they skimping a bit on resin to save a few bucks in a bad time? I wonder if the later models have had any of this trouble that the late 80's boats have had, after P.S. took over the builds....hmmm. Doesent matter now anyway, the problem is there.

So, you think I should put the barrier coat on and not just bottom paint and see what happens? I dont want to trap any moisture in, but I dont want to let any more in either, so I'm leaning in that direction as well, but I guess I have to wait and see what my friends moisture meter says. I'm going to go get it now, and see what is what. I'll add more on that later, but thanks for relaying your experience with this. I'm so surprised that even West system failed as a cure. Rebuilding laminate would be a huge nightmare as well....so I hope it does not come to that. We have owned her for 7 years, and I would like to think she will be around for much much longer with us, so I dont want to sweep it under the rug for too long either....but the costs might outweigh the benefits for sure.

Todd

Click to expand...

On the question of whether the laminate was "starved" for resin -- this was not done to save any money, since the labor to lay up the hull is a far greater expense than another ten gallons of poly resin. However, this illustrates a pitfall for any manufacturer trying to build a faster and lighter hull that will achieve the full performance specified by the designer's layup schedule.
My prior boat, from Hinterhoeller Yachts, had some dry spots in the hull laminate. They were confined to the interface between the mat layer under the gel coat and the structural layers of roving under that. I had to grind out and epoxy-fill about 30 of 'em in the decade I owned that boat. Some were over 2" across. Every succeeding haulout I found fewer and fewer, until no new ones appeared.
So, resin chemistry, moisture, and application problems to the contrary, sometimes it can be as simple as the builder just trying too hard to roll out that resin a bit too far in achieving a best cloth-to-resin ratio.

I always used West system or sometimes a "hi-strength" poly filler on the pits, avoiding any cheap fillers with clay in them that would attract moisture. (Which is why Bondo (r) is the wrong stuff for underwater use.)

FWIW, I have seen fields of small blisters in ALL brands of yachts, including Baltics and Cascades... and 70's Ericsons.

Another $.02 worth of advice.
Loren in rainy Portland

From what I've read I would not worry too much about "locking moisture within" the hull by adding barrier coating. The hulls breathes a lot from the inside, and one of the suggestions that seemed to help in my case was to add extra ventilation for the cabin to reduce interior moisture using solar vents and grid vents.

Good luck!

Yeah, as far as ventilation goes, I did this a few years ago. Someone in the past had cut 2 holes in the cabin top and installed 2 cheap plastic removable cowl vents. When installed, the slightest drop of wet would be dripping below. As a result I always kept them plugged unless it was extremely hot.



These vents are from Mariners Hardware. I ordered them at the Newport Boatshow, and I think I was dealing with a new salesman, because they were pretty much stolen, as their shipping department told me anyway.... ss vents which screw in to teak dorade boxes, under which is a ss mushroom cap vent which can be easily closed from below. The only drawback I found was occasionally the genoa sheet will wrap around the vent while tacking making for an interesting run forward to free it. (the sheet actually ripped it clean off once, and I had to make a mad dash forward to save it from going overboard. From that point on, I unscrew the vents and stow them for sailing....

Back to the project at hand....I popped a while bunch of blisters yesterday, the larger ones at least, and only a few held any moisture, and it was minimal. Popping them all would take forever and a day, and many of the little "circles" that look like actual blisters are still hard gelcoat and wont break open. I figured I would find the wet ones with the moisture meter, break them open, grind them out, fill with Interlux Watertite epoxy filler, barrier, paint and go....I'll see how it turns out.

My fear is, at this point that regardless of the condition I will have to barrier since I have eroded so much gelcoat by sanding, that it is very thin in spots. I change my mind constantly on the best course of action for the boat, and the best course of action for my budget....which didnt include a bottom job this year....

Tested the hull the other day with the moisture meter. It's not a marine unit, but has 3 scales for measuring wood, plaster, concrete etc. No setting for fiberglass. I guess that model is much more expensive...of course...its for a boat!

The moisture levels were low in some spots and higher in others. I checked against other Ericsons in the yard, and it was higher than most other boats without blistering, but I guess that is to be expected.

My resolve at this point was to pop, dry and fill the larger ones (99% of them had no moisture in them, and they were dry voids). Fair the hull and paint with one or two coats of bottom paint and sail her this year. In the fall I will see how she looks and strip off the ablaitive paint, sand through the blisters and let them dry all winter, test again with the meter, and barrier coat next spring.

I'm thinking of using Petit Hydrocoat water based ablaitive. I hear it is great and a greener alternative to oil based traditional paints. I also figure it might be easier to remove being water based, but I'm not sure. Any experiences would be helpful. I may post a new thread on that one.

Thanks for all your opinions and advice.

Todd