J/Boats J/88, Owner'S Manual

Page: 51 / 58

J88 OWNER MANUAL 51
until light contact is made. Do this for each of the six individual hull support stands (on the Triad
Trailer). After all six stands are touching the hull release the lifting straps so the boat is now mostly
on the keel with the hull support stands preventing the boat from tipping side to side. Adjust each hull
support stand upwards towards the hull to a point where you are only able to spin the carpeted top on
the hull with a good amount of force. After each hull support stand is properly adjusted tighten the set
screw on each of the 6 hull supports. This set screw prevents the wing nut handle from vibrating
down during travel.
Be particularly careful when strapping a boat down to the trailer. It’s not uncommon at regatta
venues to see boats quickly hauled and lowered onto their trailers, with little time to get the boat
aligned and sitting properly on the poppets, then strapped down hard onto the trailer with powerful
ratcheting webbing straps and then driven off. In short, the hull is being pulled down hard on top of
the keel/sump and in a very short period of time is potentially subjected to excessive stresses and
strains on the entire hull/keel/sump structure.
If you have a bow-stop on the trailer, use shorter
strap runs (running nearly vertical) over the boat rather than long diagonal straps through the
bow and stern rails. This reduces the possibility of trailer flex contributing to any excess
strain.
3) Docking & mooring - care should be taken to avoid mooring or docking your boat in locations that
can result in the keel being occasionally imbedded in the mud/sand/silt when at low tide or low water.
A combination of the keel bulb imbedded with any sort of wave action against the hull can cause
undue stress to the hull and structure. The same is true for boats that use special dockside hoisting
systems to hoist the hull out of the water, while the keel remains underwater and unsupported.
Maintenance Considerations:
1) Care should be taken to avoid having standing water in the bilge. Not only does standing water
accelerate corrosion of wiring, fasteners and keel bolts over time, it ruins floor boards and interior
woodwork. As the gelcoat/ paint ages in the bilge area, bilge water can eventually seep into the
fiberglass laminate by way of pin holes in the gelcoat and weaken the fiberglass laminate structure.
The
process of hydrolysis can be initiated in the fiberglass laminate anytime there is ingress through
cracks in the paint/gelcoat in the bilge. The process of hydrolysis is persistent and invisible- it's water
that chemically degrades the quality and strength of the laminate over time. Bilges (all areas under
the floorboards, not just the centerline bilge) should be cleaned thoroughly once per year and then
every five years recoated with fresh gelcoat or epoxy paint to ensure proper protection. In northern
climates, water turns to ice in the winter. If moisture gets into the laminate and freezes, this can
rapidly accelerate deterioration in the laminate. The New Hampshire Materials Testing Labs website
(
www.nhml.com ) has an informative article on hydrolysis, see Newsletter of May 1, 2006.
2) In any cored hull, take special care to avoid having any fasteners penetrate the inner hull laminate.
Water in the bilge area can easily weep through the fastener into the laminate and cause core
damage. If you need to secure a fitting or wire tie to the hull, the best fastening method is to glue a
piece of epoxy coated marine ply to the hull and then fasten into the ply.
3) A growing trend amongst active one-design racers is to use a dehumidifier to keep the inside of the
boat dry. This extra step not only keeps the boat a little lighter, but helps everything from wiring, to
woodwork, to sails, last longer.