Hi Peter, I just had another thought about your fiberglass life question. Many of my sailing buddies are sailing fiberglass boats from the 60's and 70's. The bilge is frequently left unpainted and all kinds of salt water based concoctions lay in there for years, and the used boat market is strong for older boats. The only typical issue I know of osmotic blistering when moisture permiates the gellcoat. Not a problem unless you keep your kayak in the water 24/7. The implication being that age doesn't cause weakness. Now, most of these boats were over-built, since they didn't exactly know the limits of the construction techniques. Still, in a good seaway the interior jointery does creek quite a bit, and leaks at joints do occur, so the do work when the seas are running with no ill effects. That's not kayak data, but at least it fiberglass data. Sorry, no excuse to buy a newer boat yet. Maybe you need to work on a reason to but ANOTHER boat. <G> Cheers, Carey *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Sep 09 2003 - 17:18:28 PDT
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