Tayana VANCOUVER 42 Operation And Maintenance Manual
                                                                      | |
Contents
| 
52CHAPTER VMAINTENANCE AND MAINTENANCE PROCEDURESMaintenance of your yacht is covered in literally hundreds of books, magazine articles andmanufacturer’s instruction books and manuals. This manual can not even list all of these resourcesbecause new and better resources are printed almost daily. It is the responsibility of the owner tosearch out the technical world and find those specific instructions and procedures with which theowner feels comfortable. This chapter hopefully will provide the basis for proper maintenanceprocedures and routines that will keep the yacht in good condition. Few persons today are under anyillusion that a fiberglass yacht is “maintenance free”. As a matter of fact, from the standpoint ofcosmetics alone, a fiberglass hull requires nearly as much time to care for as a wooden hull of similarsize. Washing, waxing, and touching up little nicks and scrapes are time consuming and demandingtasks which must be done consistently, if the yacht is to retain its new look.The advantages of fiberglass lies in areas other than cosmetics - strength, for example. Fiberglassreinforced plastics (FRP) are among the strongest boat building materials ever developed. Even amoderately well built FRP yacht will be stronger and more endurable than the best wooden built afew decades ago. In addition, fiberglass is impervious to most of the ills that can be disastrous inother materials: it doesn’t oxidize like steel; it isn’t affected by electrolysis like aluminum; it doesn’trot like wood; and it is not affected by a variety of sea life, such as worms. While it can be damagedby physical impact and the resin will burn, neglect of surface damage generally does not result inmore serious deterioration, as it would in a steel or wooden hull.A. HullNormal periodic maintenance consists of waxing the hull with any of several good fiberglass orautomobile waxes on the market today. Waxing should be done from the shear down to andincluding the waterline stripe. Wax should not be put over the bottom paint that may be at orabove the normal trim waterline of the yacht. If the gelcoat is older and wax doesn’t seem toaccomplish renewing the appearance, there are some newer fiberglass finish restorers on themarket such as “New Glass” or “Polyglas”. These products may be a problem if you ever want topaint the fiberglass.Note: From several of our dealers comes the advice that boats need to be hauled regularly in orderthat they may dry out. This is especially true of boats in fresh water as it is more soluble.Generally, if customers purchase a boat with a white hull, little dings and scrapes do not showup as badly as they do on a colored hull and one is not under as much pressure to make immediaterepairs. Scrapes and scratches in white gelcoat are relatively easy to repair. There are severalgelcoat repair kits on the market which will do a fine job, if the directions are followed closely.TaYang has provided a package of gelcoat when new. Bigger gouges can be filled with eitherpolyester or epoxy putties before the gelcoat repair system is used. Colored gelcoat presents theadditional problem of color matching. Again, there are several systems on the market that willmake it possible to match the original gelcoat color. Remember that dark colors tend to be hotterin the tropics. |
Related manuals for Tayana VANCOUVER 42
This manual is suitable for:
manualsdatabase
Your AI-powered manual search engine