When you were buying your Birchwood did the surveyor detect osmosis?

If so, what did he advise?

Bearing in mind the age of our Birchwoods it is a fair bet that they ALL have it to some extent.(Other makes suffer from it too, even boats like Brooms!)

I was advised to minimise it by giving the boat 6 months out of the water every 2 or 3 years.

It did not put me off buying the boat (no boat has ever sunk from osmosis!), but it seems some buyers use it to try and reduce the price after a sale has been agreed!

Quote :

Ramage wrote : When you were buying your Birchwood did the surveyor detect osmosis?

Surveyor?  

We take ours out every other year.  (We were planning to skip last winter's lift-out plus anti-foul but we had to lift-out in the end because of the small matter of a 1" mooring rope wrapped round our prop on our last trip of the season.   )

As far back as we know (15+ years) it's been lifted every other year and I haven't seen a single trace of osmosis on the hull at all.  Nowt.

My survey just said that it has some minor blisters but as long as its lifted for winter now and then it shouldn't be a problem for many years.

I'm not even having the Broom surveyed, as the thought of paying £600 just to get told what I already know is pointless.

It's so cheap dealing with individual blisters anyway, once out for the Winter, you just grind 'em off, jetwash, dry and fill the holes. £200 will get all the ones that need dealing with dealt with.

Byron (YBW forum) who is somebody who really understands boats, just ignores it on any well laid up boat, as the Hull will still outlast the owner.
6 months out of the water, and most blisters disappear anyway, although they soon come back once immersed!

A hull survey should not be done unless the boat has been out for a few days ideally, but this is usually ignored.

Osmosis does not bother me one bit. No quality boat has ever sunk, or suffered problems other than the actual blisters themselves.

As you say it doesnt seem to be much to worry about, when I bought mine about 6 years ago the surveyor only found 2 small blisters on the hull so no worries there, there are some on the hard top though - how does that happen?

That is a common condition too. Water lies on the top, and osmosis occurs!

Not a problem for another 20-30 years.  

Yes but the water deosnt sit on the top all the time, i suppose it is just gel coat isnt very thick on the hard top, as you say in 20 years time I will have a big problem!

No, just some blisters.

The irony is, if you have a really really bad case of delamination which bothers you (And it needn't!) and you need to cut out a patch of hull or roof, it costs under £100 to get it done professionally!

So has anybody actually heard of a real case of delamination?

The Marina staff have seen one boat in twenty years.

Osmotic blisters are simply a fact of life with GRP. A Winter out on the hard will see most blisters disappear, and the stage after blistering (Which takes years and years of untreated blisters and abused boats) is delamination which is cheaper to fix than tending for the blisters