Delaminating Azimut 55s....thoughts?

I ran a 50' Galleon and it was definately a price point boat. However I had it in a 2-4' beam sea and it rode surprisingly well. While I didn't really dig into the boat, I felt it was better quality than Prestige.

That being said there was a late model 60' Azimut docked next to a yacht I manage and it had large, round palm size bubbles where it was delaminating in the foot below the rubrail and about every 6' down the entire side of the boat.......and the bubbles were raised 1/2" and it was the glass delaminating, not the gelcoat.

I saw the listing of this Azimut, anyways depends on the extent of the delamination if this worth or not. I would say 100k if the damage is the picture should be enough.
A high end 70 feet sailing yacht was fixed for about 300k and it had total delamination.
A used 2005 Azimut 55S goes for about 900k. One needs to do the maths.

With the picture it looks to be resin starvation, a not uncommon occurrence in vacuum infused constructed boats. What is strange here is that a 2013 construction with 660 engines hours is showing it today. That is a eight year old boat.
Resin starved areas usually show a year or less after construction. Unless the boat has not been used much. But the 660 engine hours which is not a lot but not little, neither.

So for me we have two cases for this Azimut 55 S, one is that it had delamination signs and no one did nothing about it, the second is that someone did something to create this delamination.
The pictures show it more to be case one then in two. But who knows...

But that's the point, how can you know?
It's not like resin starvation tends to concentrate along the slings position...

An expert surveyor in vacuum infusion can easily tell you by scanning all the hull. There is also equipment which really helps in this.
It is not difficult today to know the extent. Considering the age of the boat I would not think that it goes much way beyond where it showed.

Today resin starvation is a known occurrence in vacuum infused construction more so with the PVC cored once.
It is a lot more difficult to show in balsa cored boats for example, but it also more difficult to happen since balsa drinks resin much better then PvC will ever do.
Some builders are building in transparent gelcoat to know immediately when it happens and rectify immediately during construction.
Others scan the hull. I was speaking to a builder who builds 5/10 boats a year and he told me out of ten boats builds one would always be resin starved.
Anyways after the first case showed up he started to build in transparent gel to be sure of the final product.

I can't think of any logical reason why it shouldn't.
It would be a weird coincidence if the only weak points were concentrated right around the lifting points.
Imho, even surveying that hull would be just throwing good money after bad.
But good luck to anyone optimistic enough to embark on a project like that.

Cause that is how resin starvation happens. It concentrates in the area where the cloth is resin starved.

I struggle with your reasoning, W.
Pretty sure the hull was somehow affected by starvation years before the accident happened.
But out of the blue, while being pulled, she falls apart under the slings pressure, as visible in the pic.
Hoping that the only weak points were those, and the rest of the hull is fine, is beyond optimistic, methinks.

Not exactly. If you find the brokerage advert, they have a picture with the peeling in the water.
So the slings have nothing or little to do with the delamination.
It is a surveyor work, to find the extent of the delamination.
But with the peeling stopping in an area means the resin starved is remote to that area.

Fair enough, I missed that bit.
I will not bother searching the advert anyhow, that's not my cup of tea regardless of the damages!

FWIW from circa 2018 all Ferretti group plastic boats across the range are transparent Vac bagged .They then after quality control spray paint them .
Even Ferretti beige as well as Itama blue .

I was at the Monaco yacht show on a blue Itama and enquired about an alternative colour Was told any RAL number as everything you see here ( the whole range inc Pershing, Riva etc ) were ALL sprayed inc the blue Itama I was stood on .
For the very reasons discussed here .With the gel coat colour you cannot easily pick up post Vac bagging defects .They occur with the best technical prep .

It’s the paint tech that has come up so much so it looks like gel coat colour.
Good to hear and see in the flesh .
I did poke about and tap it with my finger nails looking for paint clues , but I will be dammed if I could tell .
Every boat you see is clear Vac bagged , then painted after .

I can't resist the temptation to reiterate what I already posted in another forum, i.e.:

...Why, what can possibly go wrong?

I have to ask, Is this the technology that they used in the later Bertram builds that destroyed that company?

Yes it is.
You can watch more about the very same technology in this video, if you are interested...

Bertram used to vacuum infuse the sides, not the hull bottom AFAIK. That what was written in the spec anyways.
First generation Diab-Core was prone to resin starvation.
Diab Divinycell is the core most boat builders use (Azimut, Princess, Sunseeker (for topsides) Sea Ray etc etc)
Diab has launched since some years a second generation Core which improves the flow of resin.

USA made Core-Cell is a much better core for example but few use it as it costs more (about double).

As for Bertram delaminating, they had cases which started in the nineties, before the FG entrance, some involving even balsa builds.
The problems with Bertram's delaminating was that someone felt the need to highly publicize it at the time. It was 2009 boats where not selling like cakes as today....
Possibly FG never really took care of QC how they should have had, especially with the USA logistics for an Italian ownership being what they are, and then eventually it came back to hunt them.
What I can say is that before they closed and sold the business to Gavio they where in a good way fixing a lot of things.

But they where not the first and not the last to delaminate, unfortunately with vacuum infusion it is easier to happen, then the traditional method of boat building.
In another US forum a high end CC pops up more or less every month with a delamination case.

Viking was still balsa coring up until 2012 and then they switched to PVC I believe using Core-Cell.

Hatteras uses vacuum infusion with Divinycell too. The Devil is in the Details and Hatt seems to attend to those. There is a good recent (2018) video of the process on Boat Test dot Com. Those interested can open the site and then the video on Hatteras Hull Construction.

Sure I agree. Though when the Bertram case popped up in 2009, some said that Hatteras had its own cases of Delamination which where quickly wrapped rectified etc etc
Vacuum infusion is a great way to build boats, but an error during construction can be a costly mistake to the hulls integrity. So I think it is not so good for a production method.
It is easy to do the error with boat building for the most part being man made.
Employer X who is laminating hull no.10 on Friday have had a nice party on Thursday night and really is a bit tired. So we know how the rest can go.

If I remember well sister company Cabo (in Brunswick ownership period or before) used to use Core-Cell. As I said Diab has since some years (I think 2012) introduced a second generation Core.

Let me be clear it does not mean that Diab core equals delamination, but the boats that seem to delaminate use this core rather then the other one.
Even with the cases that we have there is possibly thousands of boats with Diab core, Azimut has been using it for example since the early nineties.
At some point CoreCell made also an advert about this, if I remember well they then have been ordered to change the advert by a court order.

Bertrams issues were FAR more extensive than what you believe and effected far more boats than you believe. I personally know of about 18 57' or 63's that had major structural issues and in the beginning Bertram paid and swept most of them under the rug. Until that 63' sank and fell apart for no apparent reason. Basically Bertram sub contracted the lay ups of their hulls to the air conditioning vendor they used at the time (who shall remain nameless for other reasons). They would come in at night and layup the hulls. They were basically pouring hardener right into 55 gallon drums of resin and adding gallons of extra hardener to get the hulls to setup fast. THIS, caused the coring (which was cheap coring) to not get saturated, and the fiberglass to become too hard and brittle. A lot of the 57' Bertrams had oil canning issues and bulkhead tabbing breaking. Some miraculously peeled off entire sheets of the exterior fiberglass exposing raw coring and didn't sink. Hull #1 of the 63' ripped the port engine right off of the stringers and it was laying in the aisle on it's Maiden sea trial. The ISSUES really started exposing themselves around 2004.......even swept under the rug many people saw the damage at boat yards and so forth. The problem was, in 2009, Bertram no longer had the funds to keep sweeping them under the rug and fixing them OR paying off the owners. One owner had 2 different boats come apart.

I have not heard of any Hatteras delaminations or Viking (except the SF that hit the whale and the outer skin peeled off of the hull.) There was a very late model 60' Azimut flybridge in the slip next to one of the yachts I manage and it had a 8" around delamination bubble that looked to stick out 1/2", just under the rub rail, and one about every 4'.

Capt J I would be careful of some claims you say how this and that yacht was build. Back in the day someone challenged you re Bertram and told you where telling a bunch of lies.
They also told you the company name who was doing some the sub-contracting work for Bertram, and went into details what they where doing.
Playing the keyboard warrior is an easy job, everyone can do it, even kids do it. You toxicate a productive post, and it is annoying.

It's been so many years that Ive forgotten some of the exact details of the owners. But, I ran and managed a brand new one of the "new" 57's that was oil canning, breaking all of the bulkhead tabbing loose, and coming apart within the first few months of ownership. I picked it up new, ran it for about 7 months and the owner got rid of it and got a 61' Viking. Some of the Bertrams were fixed right down the street from my house at Merritts. I personally know of about 18 of them that were oil canning and breaking bulkheads loose, having the outer fiberglass of the hull peel off in a sheet or coming apart in other fashions. I spoke to the owners of many of them at the time it happened, was happening, as I was running one it was happening to. YOU brought Bertram into this discussion with Azimut somehow. The common consensus among South Florida surveyors who surveyed most of those Bertrams when it happened, and when they were new, who I deal with on a regular basis was that the resin had way too much hardener causing it to be too hard and brittle and not adhere (or saturate into the coring, however you want to call it). There was no strict layup schedule of the hull that was adhered to, no quality control in the hull layup. Bertrams were built less than an hour from my house, not half way across the world from my location. When you're in the marine industry, you pretty much know what goes on right in your back yard, as you saw them in boat yards getting fixed on a regular basis. There are pictures of several of them coming apart in spectacular fashion right here on this website. The 63' in Palm Beach with 10' of it's hull side flapping in the waves, completely seperated from the coring (this same owners previous new 57' was coming apart breaking all of the stringers free of the bulkheads and bulkheads loose and the 63' was his free warranty replacement, or which they gave him a 70' which he then sold and didn't use). The 63' that sank in NC or SC that broke apart in a bunch of pieces. The 57' that peeled 10' of the fiberglass right off of it's running surface and had exposed coring only in that section that one of the most famous Bertram owners owned. Are a couple that came to mind.

FWIW Bertram has had structural issues since the 60's or 70's with coring issues, throughout their entire build. Soft cockpit decks, FB decks and foredecks have plagued Bertram their entire life. They NEVER learned from them, nor fixed their build process, just accepted it as such. So much so that Glasstech made an entire business out of selling Bertram replacement cockpit floors and other problem area fiberglass replacement parts. Soft decks that you feel like you're going to fall through when walking on them, are a structural issue. Period. Viking used Balsa coring for years, you don't hear of issues of coring failures or soft decks. Why because they properly sealed any openings and laid them up right. Everyone puts Bertram on such a high pedestal, but how can you, when you don't see these issues so widespread compared to Hatteras or Viking from the same area. And let's not even get started on their wiring up until the 2000s.

Compare them to any old 1980's Ocean yacht, which are nicknamed flexible flyers and a price point boat. A 250 lb guy can go jump up and down on any old 1980's Ocean yacht foredeck, flybridge, or cockpit without fear of falling through one. How many pictures have you seen of Ocean yachts coming apart? So much so that they are no longer seaworthy?

Take a close look at the layer that is left in the photo. There are almost no fiberglass strands attached to that layer. This could indicate a "never-lam" rather than a delam, meaning that there was never a good bond between layers for whatever reason. Often times this is caused by waiting too long between laminations. However, if this boat was infused then there may be a an even larger issue. Either way it's possibly not worth saving.