C-Forum

It's my first winter with an ash trimmed boat in the northwoods. I know I need to deal with it so expanding/ contracting don't crack the royalex, but how far do I need to go? Just back the screws out? Remove the trim completely? Thanks in advance for your help.

That would depend on the length of the your boat. The longer the boat, the more screws you would want to take out.

Is cracking also an issue on PE boats with wood gunnels??

ian123 wrote:Is cracking also an issue on PE boats with wood gunnels??

The answer to that question is important to me as well. Particularly since I am expecting delivery of a new short red wood-gunnelled polyethylene boat from Esquif within the next couple of months. Anyone able to respond to this?

regards
dave

I don't know about the expansion of the PE plastic, but on royalex boats, I slotted the last 5-7 screw hulls on each end in the royalex to 3/8" (depending on the boat length) and they survived paddling all through our Michigan winters without ever cracking.
I'm guessing PE wouldn't expand much differently.

I've had 3 wood trim WW boats through the winter and never had an issue. I live in Southern Ontario and store boats are in the garage so it's probably less of an issue for me. If you store your boat outside and or experience greater temperature swings you might want to try slotting the screw holes so you don't have to back them out every year. I would suggest the 3- 4 on each side at each end to be sufficient. I backed out screws and slotted the holes on one of my boats but tt was more of a make work project as I've never had an issue. I put wood on my Outrage this year and don't plan to do anything special for it.

This could be a silly question, but a horizontal slot or vertical? I assume horizontal but could be wrong.