Curious if anyone has had any problems with the carbon Chathams made by Cobra. A friend had a 2009 for 18mo from new. Then started noticing wet spots in the cockpit right in front of the seat, you could wipe it dry then press your finger in and small droplets of water would rise up nearby. The area was about 3"x4". It wasn’t that the light interior glass was delaminated from the core, the core was actually soaked. Never seen other core materials do that.
So sad
I’ve had that happen with a sail boat before. The boat eventually got so heavy it would not sail properly, it took years and money to fix it. I think on a kayak is might be time to start over, but if it is a small area I would quickly cut out all the wet foam and put in dry and try to seal up the spot where the water is entering the core.
Gosh I hate cored boats, but for a couple years they are sure light and strong.
Sailboats yes, kayaks no.
It’s funny how kayak manufactures have gone to using core materials all over the place in an effort to reduce weight in non-racing kayaks. At most it’s a few lbs over the older constructions of heavy roving but the damage occurs around stress risers where the core ends or overly light interior glass makes for a kind of egg-shell brittleness (Chinese made glass Zephyr)
What I don’t get is water in the Soric core, that doesn’t happen with Core-mat which is the more common core material I’ve seen in kayaks.
Infusion missed this spot Lee.
Not enough resin?
– Last Updated: Aug-28-12 6:38 PM EST –
Would the same happen with coremat? There's yellowish splotchy area that seems to correspond to the soaked areas. I cut the piece out and sure enough it's soaked through the Soric core, you can squish bubbles of water through the hexagonal channels and it's wet on the cut edge.