Help figuring our which Irwin this is?

[trecksail]

I just purchased this boat. The previous owner believes it is an Irwin 38 with DISPLACEMENT: 15,500# BALLAST: 7,500# MAST HEIGHT: 53’ BEAM: 10.5

The following link has quite a few photos

http://www.scuba26.com/n/2004/irwin/index.html

I would really appreciate any info I can get, Joe

[Irwin32]

I would bet this boat to be an early 70''s vintage. The design is very similar to my 32, a ''73. It does, in fact look like it is a blown up version of the 32 - though maybe the opposite is the case. At first look I thought it was the 32, but it is not. There is a website of Irwin boats w/brochures, but I have lost the address.

Numbers are in line with the 32. 11,5 displacement, 5000 ballest 42.5 ft mast, 9''8" beam.

What is left of the interior is also similar.

I have had my 32 for 14 years on Lake Michigan and it has been a great boat for me. I am taking it to the North Channel this summer for 12 weeks.

People say Irwins were not well made, and I do see lots of corners cut - poor inside cabinet finish - leaky windows, poor use of backplating.

I do, however, find this boat to be solid. My decks are firm and do not flex under foot. The hull seems solid. At the bow, where I installed my depth transducer, is was 7/16" thick. Seems ok to me.

[trecksail]

Thank you for your input. Do you have any photos of your boat I could take a look at?
Would be very interesting, Joe

[Irwin32]

Email me at higgs@mc.net.

[Jeff_H]

That definitely is an Irwin and my best guess is that it is a 1970''s era Irwin Competition 37. (There is a very slight chance that it is an Iwrin Citation 38 or 39 but I would strongly doubt that it is either.)

I must say that you sure are taking on a tough project. Looking at the photo''s this is a boat with extremely difficult to properly repair structural issues, some of which may be next to impossible to repair properly such as the keel.

My best advice is to try to limit your investment as much as reasonable. This will be quite a balancing act between keeping costs to a reasonable budget while avoiding being so frugal that you end up with a boat that is so cobled up that it won''t have a reasonable resale value or degree of safety. It is hard to set a budget when dealing with a boat that was originally pretty poorly built and that would have a present day resale value around $30,000-35,000 in near perfect shape. Unless there is a warehouse full of gear that comes with this ole girl, this boat could easy have a negative value, by which I mean that it would cost much more to simply buy the parts and materials to put this boat into shape than the boat could ever be worth.

As to sailing ability, I have raced on a mid-1970''s Competition 37. They are not too bad in moderate winds but are not terribly good sailing boats in light air and are pretty scary at the heavy going end of things.

Respectfully,
Jeff

[trecksail]

Thank you both. I did measure from the tip of the bow to the top back of the transom and it was a little over 38''. I actually plan on keeping the cabin pretty bare for a while aside from necessary hull and deck enforcement. My main concern is of course the keel. There are 4 keel bolts which all seem solid. Shouldn''t I just be able to patch the cut areas of the fiberglass of the keel since none to ballast seems to have been affected by the cuts?

Again, really appreciate your help.
Joe

[Jeff_H]

Given the height and length of the cut through the keel, the cut probably passes through the keel bolts meaning that you have no real connection between the keel and the hull. If the boat was designed as an encapsulated keel, it would be possible to cut away enough of the encapsulation envelope to make a reasonable connection, but that requires cutting away much of the encapsulation envelope and creating a new, fully adhered encapsulation which is next to impossible to do with secondary bonds.

Jeff

[trecksail]

Jeff,

It actually did not cut through the ballast or keel bolts. Only fiberglass and bilge area. I can look through the entire cut area and see out the other side and all the way up into the boat or all the way down out the cuts from inside the boat throught the bilge area. The lead ballast starts about an inch below the cut and the keel bolts are in the uncut area. I think he had planned to try and unbolt the keel and let the bottom with the ballast drop off for the clearance he needed get through the overhead door. It sounds like someone else that was in the warehouse that had a brain came up with a better idea at that point. Does that give it some chance? If the keel bolts, ballast, and encapsulation area are intact, is just patching the cuts feasable?

Thank you again for your patience and assistance,
Joe

[Jeff_H]

I don''t have a lot of time to get into detail on this but here is the jist of what I was trying to say earlier. This is a very highly stressed area of the boat. When the boat was originally constructed, the fiberglass in this area was laid up wet and laminmate was lapped across the bottom of the keel stub. This results in continuous fibers that are capable of taking the very high cyclical tension and compression loads that would be expected in this area of the boat.

The saw cut goes right through the continuous fibers of that key area of the boat. To properly make the repair to this area, the ballast keel needs to be unbolted and the sump rebuilt almost from scratch so that the glass fibers of a tapered layup extends far up into the hull beyond the saw cut and lap across the bottom of the keel sump. The length of the keel bolts will limit the depth of the material in the sump so that you may actually have to replicate the sump. If the fibers of the hull laminate were damaged by the sawcut and absorbed bilge water, you could end up cutting away a much larger portion of the hull than you can imagine.


In any event, the general rule of thumb for secondary bonds between epoxy and aged polyester in a cyclical high stress area is generally quoted somewhere in the range of 1:12 to 1:20, and according to ABS, the side of the keel sump area of your hull should have a minimum thickness in the 25 mm to 30 mm (1" to 1.2") range (if I remembering correctly) with the bottom of the keel sump being nearly twice that.

In other words we are talking about a tapered lap onto the hull in the range of 15" min on up to something approaching a 24" overlap. That is a huge overlap that would add a lot of weight to the boat, albeit in an area where weight is not as much of a disadvantage. To really get the kinds of bonding, and strength that is needed in this area you are probably looking at using bi-axial fabrics and epoxy resin using an absolute minimum of non-directional materials.

The strength of the repair can be greatly augmented by adding transverse frames with lonitudinal stringers at the outboard ends of the frames. The real point is that this a job that requires a high level of skill.

As someone has pointed out, it is not even safe to move the hull without glassing in new bulkheads and longitudinals since the move could further damage the structural integrity of the hull molding due to the point loads of moving this boat.

Jeff

[trecksail]

Thank you,
Joe