Accumulated water

[BobRichardson]

Good morning, All.
I am the new owner of a 1966 O'Day DSI, #12796, Class 2264
The boat had been sitting out on a mountaintop in Idaho for years. It had ~3 inches of water and ice in the aft interior. After thawing it out and bailing out the water, I opened the drains under both seats. Water just gushed out !. Water also came out of the forward plug in the cuddy.
So my first questions are: how did all that water get into the seats? What damage would it have done, and how could I identify any damage?
Also this - I have read in a couple of places that some DSI's had a two layer design in the aft, and that there is a void under the sole. Is that true?
Any help is very much appreciated.

[GreenLake]

Welcome to the forum!

With a sail number of #2264 you have the original single hull design. (There's a link to a spreadsheet here, called DS1 design changes where you can look up info on boats of a similar vintage).

The three tanks (seats and front) are supposed to be air/water tight when the plugs are in. If there are leaks/openings other than for the drainage plugs, best to find and fix.

Likely, the boat had standing water and that entered the tanks via the drain holes. As long as freezing didn't create cracks, the main damage would be that the foam in these tanks is now waterlogged beyond repair.

The approved fix is to put inspection ports, or "deck plates", in the aft face of the cuddy tank and the forward faces of the seat tanks. Select the very largest set of ports you can still fit, the forward tank allows a slightly larger opening than the seats.

Before installing the ports, reach in and remove the bad foam. Replace with any good foam that will stay dry. Some people use pool noodles, some use the better kind of builders' foam cut into long strips. The key is not necessarily to get every single cubic inch filled with foam, but enough to have reserve capacity in case a tank floods when the boat capsizes. (Make sure to plug the drain holes).

After adding the foam, install the inspection ports to close up the tanks (they will narrow the opening a bit, so that's why the new foam goes in first). It's not a terribly involved fix.

Here's the hole I cut into my forward tank.

[stillwaterfield]

Likely, the boat had standing water and that entered the tanks via the drain holes. As long as freezing didn't create cracks, the main damage would be that the foam in these tanks is now waterlogged beyond repair.

The approved fix is to put inspection ports, or "deck plates", in the aft face of the cuddy tank and the forward faces of the seat tanks. Select the very largest set of ports you can still fit, the forward tank allows a slightly larger opening than the seats.

Before installing the ports, reach in and remove the bad foam. Replace with any good foam that will stay dry. Some people use pool noodles, some use the better kind of builders' foam cut into long strips. The key is not necessarily to get every single cubic inch filled with foam, but enough to have reserve capacity in case a tank floods when the boat capsizes. (Make sure to plug the drain holes).

After adding the foam, install the inspection ports to close up the tanks (they will narrow the opening a bit, so that's why the new foam goes in first). It's not a terribly involved fix.

I just did this. I ordered three six inch inspection ports and got myself a six inch hole saw and opened up the bow and under the seats. Then I pulled out 160 pounds of soggy styrofoam. That's a whole person's worth of dead weight! Wow! No wonder my boat was so slow.

To get it all out I jury rigged some rebar to a barbeque tongs that allowed me to snag and pull out all of the Styrofoam. Then I cleaned out the crumbs with a Shopvac. Clean verifid by taking pictures.

I used pool noodles under the seats. I got them for a dollar a pop at a discount store (Five Below). I used half gallon milk cartons for the bow flotation tank. Those should last for more than a hundred years.

The inspection ports were siliconed and screwed in, thus nicely watertight. I also plugged the tiny existing inspection ports the same way. I suspect that all the years of not having them plugged was mostly how all of that water got in there. Twenty gallons of water stuck in that styrofoam. And I thought it was supposed to be open for 'ventilation'. Ha! Now those are plugged nicely.

Other things I did with my boat this winter and spring are: Sanding down the centerboard which I had previously epoxied with a graphite mix. Sanding exposes the graphite. Doh! Then I found a piece of mast for my hinged mast, placed between hull and now above deck to restore my mast to original height. The jib will fit so much better now. Oh, and new thicker guy wires with turnbuckles. I sanded the underwater part of the hull, patched some gouges, blisters, and crazing, faired, sealed with epoxy, and painted. Smooth and beautiful. And I found an official DS1 rudder and shaped it a bit and refinished it. When I was figuring out the gudgeons for it I found rot in the transom. That I still have to fix that this coming week.

I hope to post about some of the above in coming days. I just wanted to say that many of us probably have some soggy Styrofoam on board and that isn't going to help much in a capsize.

[GreenLake]

Great story on the Styrofoam. Thanks for giving us the details.