[quote=adlert]Thanks very much lakewateree and windwardde. I contacted Aquarius Sail. Left a message and in practically no time Tom Haberman called back. Heckuva nice man. He spent several minutes with me describing the hatches and general construction techniques used during the early 1980's era. He recalls that the hatches were installed in '81 and '82 during a time when they weren't installing drain plugs. The one I'm looking at is a '83 with hatches and drain plugs but whatever, he thought there might be some overlap into '83. Or, possibly they were added later as in your case windwardde. He said they dropped the hatches due to leaking problems and because they were compromising transom strength. He noted however that it is not a huge deal to replace them, and obviously reinforcing the transom is done during the procedure (inside and out). I can see how having the hatches could be nice, given proper reinforcement of the transom.
Tom also noted that up until about 1985, the polyester resins used to make the boats were what was common for the day and that sometimes as these boats have gotten older, they have weakened some (transom area and just forward and inside of the front beam. He also said that in 1985 they went to an improved resin. He noted they rarely see any structural degradation over time with the hulls made with the newer resin. And then in 1992 (I think) they went to epoxy and it's wonderful of course.
The boat I'm looking at is a 1983. It looks great, but I'm wondering, seeing as I only want to get the one, if maybe I should cool my jets a little and hold out for a 1985 or later model. Sure wish I could just hop over and see it. Even the owner is hundreds of miles from currently. Maybe a neighbor could get a picture...[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
