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A Bayliner Buccaneer 272 given to me 4 free?

5K views 10 replies 8 participants last post by  Jeff_H 
#1 ·
I’ve been offered a 1980 272 for free. It’s in a local lake with 12 inches of water standing inside. The owner has no trailer. The cabin would have to be completely redone due to the water damage. My biggest question I’d like to have answered is, is this repairable or has the standing water damaged the structural integrity of the boat? I’m a master trim carpenter so the woodwork should be relatively easy for me.
Frankly I have boat fever though I’ve been giving a lot to home build a sailboat,, I’m shocked and awed at the notion of a free boat! I could take it and haul it onto a regular flatbed trailer and savage the rigging, which appears to be intact. The mast has (lol) a sail in the front and a sail in the back in canvas, though I didn’t care to open the canvas and check the state of the fabic.
From the looks of it the lake level went down and nobody tended to the boat leaving it on shore. Upon lake filling water gained entry to the cabin/ hull. Beyond the fiberglass skin, do anyone know what the hull is comprised of? Are there wooden elements of the hull that now renders the boat junk, due to the water immersion?
Thanks ahead of time for any help you could send my way. Happy sailing.
 
#2 ·
don't worry too much

Bought a pearson Triton a while ago that had sat for several years with water inside, looked nasty.
surprisingly solid, and the woodwork was still in good but grungy shape, cleaned up nice.

Normally the hull is solid, not cored, though that seems to be changeable.
not an impossible job if it is, not fun, but doable.

www.geocities.com/merc2dogs

shows what mine looked like when I first picked it up.

ken.
 
#3 ·
My friend a free boat is a free boat!
What's the worst that can happen here?
How do you lose?
Worst case sell it or it's parts on ebay and make a few $$$

As for water damage...

Drain it, put a number of fans and a dehumidifier in the cabin for a week and you are done. Anything warped or delaminated you replace and as you said it should be easy and enjoyable for you. The fiberglass will be fine.

Go to it!
 
#4 ·
My friend a free boat is a free boat!
What's the worst that can happen here?
How do you lose?
Worst case sell it or it's parts on ebay and make a few $$$

As for water damage...

Drain it, put a number of fans and a dehumidifier in the cabin for a week and you are done. Anything warped or delaminated you replace and as you said it should be easy and enjoyable for you. The fiberglass will be fine.

Go to it!
 
#6 ·
I'd say go for it... the free hull is a good start for you, but a survey isn't a bad idea. Even if you have to gut the hull and redo the interior from scratch, that still is not that bad, provided the deck and hull are fairly sound.
 
#7 ·
Be prepared for more of a project than you expect. Also, if the hull is cored, you may not want to take it on. Could cost musch more to fix than it would to buy a boat in decent shape. Old Pearsons had solid hulls but many other boats did not. Balsa cored hulls can become unsound as a result of exposure to water. If I were you, I would do a google search and try to email owner(s) as to whether the hull is cored.
 
#8 ·
I agree about getting a survey. Even a free boat can be too expensive if it's not worth the $$$ it would take to fix it up.
 
#9 ·
Ahhhhh blast the survey dry it out and have a good look. Bayliner was famous for using cheep plywood for the stringers and glassing them over. I would look at that and the transom which is also plywood if it is rotted and the motor needs to be rebuilt well it could be a real dog. I took a Bayliner and on the sides of the Ninteen seventie through eighty years boats they have a hard chine above the water line about 18" on a 27 it may be 24" or more. I used it as a guide about two inches above it and cut the top off and removed it. I used a circular saw and a Stanley Paranah Blade it cut right through it. The stringers were rotted so I took a sawsall and a long blade and if you cut to the bottom and hold it at an angle you can walk right down the hull and cut the stringers out and never hurt the hull. What I had was a bare hull which I built a real nice dive boat out of for about $1000 including all new hardware and a new deck.
 
#10 ·
I'd also do a little research to see if the boat was made with a cored hull, or if the hull was solid laminate. If it is solid laminate, then it's probably worth going for... if it is a cored hull, be very cautious... fixing it if the core has delaminated is very time consuming and fairly expensive.
 
#11 ·
I have quite a bit of experience with these boats. They were terribly built in almost all ways and frankly putting one back together that has been sunk will cost way more than the price of a decent boat in sailable condition. My biggest concern with one of these boats that had been sunk would be the keel sump. The way these boats were built the keel was molded with the hull. The ballast keel was foamed into place and then plywood glassed in over the top with chopped glass. There are no transverse frames and the plywood has a tendancy to rot out over time. Water is able to get into the ballast keel and with the steel and concrete ballast used in these boats rust prys the ballast apart. At least it did on the one that I worked on. There is no real fix for that.

Much of the interior plywood (if not all of the interior plywood) including structural elements were a non marine grade, and so if saturated and sitting in a dank cabin is probably rotted and delaminated. These boats were skip tabbed rather than tabbed continuously as well.

When you consider how poorly designed these boats were to begin with and how much it would cost to put one back together, if you consider the cost of materials and used gear, replacing sails, engine, upholstery, the electrical system, reworking the rigging attachment points, replacing rotten bulkheads, replacing shot interior and exterior deck hardware and so on, this boat has a negative value. You would be ahead of the game junking the boat.

Sorry to be the voice of doom and gloom but I have been in your shoes and helped many others who have found themselves with the same decision.

Respectfully,
Jeff
 
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