Let's have a look inside that boat

As I've mentioned in recent posts, I was unable to thread new rudder lines in my six-year-old Epic V12 surf ski because, I believed, the tubes that house the lines were broken inside the boat.  Having tried every trick I could think of to avoid it, I decided some major surgery was in order.

I hated to do it, but I sucked it up and did it: I cut a hole in the deck of my beautiful boat, some 14.5 inches (37 cm) aft of the seat bucket:

Right away I learned something new: the boat has a reinforcing wall running the length of its stern half (and maybe its bow half too, but with any luck I'll never have to lay eyes on it):

So I had to cut a little section of that out to complete the hole.


A look inside confirmed my suspicion that the rudder-line tubes were broken:

In fact, the tubes turned out to broken into may pieces:

How this happened, I'm not sure: the degradation of any plastic product typically involves exposure to ultraviolet radiation, and you wouldn't expect that with tubes sealed inside a boat like this.  My best guess is that the fluctuating temperature is responsible.  I keep my boat down at the marina where it endures the hottest temperatures of summer and the coldest temperatures of winter.  The tubes do get moisture inside them and I can believe the freezing and thawing of that moisture in the wintertime takes its toll on the tubes over a period of years.

Obviously, I could avoid this problem by keeping my boat stored in my garage at home instead of down at the marina.  But I love the convenience of having my boat waiting for me down on the riverfront, where I can just take it off the rack and put it right into the water.  A little extra wear and tear on my boat is a price I'm willing to pay not to have to load the boat on and off my car every time I want to paddle.  The boat, after all, is simply a thing that enables me to engage in paddling, and the paddling is what is important.

So... anyway.  Now that the demolition is done, how will I rebuild?  That'll be the topic of my next post.