Endeavour 35

[chuckiebits]

We are narrowing our search for a Bahamas / Caribbean live-aboard (6 months on 6 mths off), and this one keeps coming to the top. It isn't perfect (what boat is?) but we like the 4'11 draft, the fit/finish seems pretty good, it is a very roomy 35' boat, and the numbers indicate that it should have the kind of light-air and windward performance we are looking for (at least in a shoal draft boat). And, there are a few of them in our price range! But some of these boats have closed-cell foam cored decks, and I am wondering if this is something that should scare me away?

Also, anyone with comments in general on the mid-80's Endeavour 35 - I have had no luck whatsoever in finding a review or objective 3rd-party opinion on these boats (tried BoatUS, Practical Sailor, Sailnet)

Thanks for your advice!

John

[Jeff H]

The Endeavour 35's seemed to have an upgraded build and design quality relative to Endeavour's earlier models. The 35's were a Bruce Kelly design rather than a Johnson design like the earlier Endeavours. I have always thought that Bruce was a very tallented designer. These seem to have had a very loyal following.

Jeff

[GordMay]

I’d consider the Endeavor 35 to be a “moderate” boat in all (most) things (ie: design & quality).With a production run of about 300 boats (1983-1987), I’d consider it a fairly popular model.
I wouldn’t worry about Cored Decks at all - subject to specific inspection. The 35 uses encapsulated lead ballast, whereas I’d prefer a suspended exterior keel (but it’s not a deal breaker). It's got the preferred "internal flange" hull/deck joint.
All in all, this could be an excellent choice for the Bahamas, at the right price.

Endeavour 35 Sailboat Specifications
http://www.endeavourowners.com/boats/e35/e35specs.html

FWIW,
Gord

[beachbm61]

John,
We looked at and for an Endeavour 35 for the same purpose. Have since found a more suitable boat for us. After looking at 5 35's here are some things we learned in our search:
- If any moisture gets into the Klegecell cored deck it causes larger than normal problems. And a repair shop familiar with this coring needs to be employed. All but one of the boats we looked at had problems.
- The mast step is a very corrosion prone area. All the boats had had this are repaired.
- All owners and brokers claim it is a "tender" boat. Good or bad, you'll have to decide on that one.
- All the boats had leaky ports. A "common" Endeavour problem.
- For a cruiser they have respectable speed. Three of the boats had a handfull of trophies to their credit.
- When maintained they sure look better than most of the marina stock.

Here's a review someone provided me:

http://www.spinsheet.com/Images/Used%20Boat/endeavour35.pdf [URL]

Good luck

Bob

[Jeff H]

I am surprised at beachbm61 's comments about Klegecell. While klegecell has less sheer strength than Balsa, it is generally considered to be a premium product that is more durable and less prone to delamination than Balsa. This is especially true when used as a deck material where sheer tends to be less of a problem than moisture problems. Klegecell is a crosslinked closed cell foam making water migration next to impossible (at least as this material is generally described in the literature.)

Jeff

[Richhh]

I disagree somewhat about Kelegecel. Klegecel doesnt have the 'resiliency'/deformation recovery as balsa - meaning that its 'hysterisis' of recovery from deformation isnt the same as and is/was inferior to balsa. It also needs a stronger laminate overylay to protect it against impact. These comments are based on my observations of about 20-25 years ago so there may be reformulations to klegecel since then that remediate such characteristics for the present day.

Some of large sailing scow manufacturers switched from balsa to klegecel and soon found out that due to twist of the hull, accidental impacts to the deck would soon create a delamination of the structure. Granted that such sport boats are laid up with the thinnest possible schedule of laminates to keep the overall weight to a minimum and that Klegecel with the probably proper overlayers of adequate protection would perform as well as balsa for this 'light-weight' construction; but, probably needed a heavier layer of laminate over it to protect it. So, from such observations from a very limited application it seems that one needs a much thicker core of kelgecel in comparison to balsa - not with respect to 'box beam' requirements but just to address the 'recovery' and impact strength of kelgecel. Again, this was the situation about 25 years ago, so with new formulations the product may be vastly improved.

[beachbm61]

chuckiebits,
Don't take my comments about the deck too far. I should have added I don't know much about this fiberglass. These other guys sound like they know the material. Just what I've read and been told. But, we know how that stuff goes. We looked at the Endeavour 35's after falling for the Endeavour 38 CC. But, being out of my price range. Still like most Endeavor models. Good luck.

[capt lar]

Gord - you commented..."The 35 uses encapsulated lead ballast, whereas I’d prefer a suspended exterior keel"..... Why ? capt lar

[chuckiebits]

Thanks, guys, this has been really great information.

Gord, I am interested in your answer about encapsulated keels. I know I read somewhere about the dangers of water incursion if you go aground and damage the keel. The other question I had - without keel bolts, how do you provide a ground for lightning disipation? I think our J/30 was grounded to the keel bolts.

Thanks again!

John

[Jeff H]

My comments from an earlier discussiom.

This is another one of those ‘no one universally right answers’ questions. In other words an argument can be made for either type of keel. (For the record, I personally strongly prefer a bolt on keel rather than an encapsulated keel.) Here’s the way I see it.

Lets start with the basics, niether bolt on keels or encapsulated keels are inherently stronger or weaker. It all comes down to how any given example of each is actually engineered. They each have to deal with a variety of loads and they both have to spread these loads out into the hull and they both have to deal with the trauma of a heeled boat dropping off a wave or running at speed into an immoveable object.

If you look at the way side forces work, the maximum force occurs where the keel stub hits the hull and not necessarily where the ballast meets the hull. The keel is a simple cantilever and maximum bending moment occurs at the fold in the hull where it turns down toward the keel. What happens structurally at the bottom of the keel is almost irrelevant to the discussion.

So it is that the area that turns down into the keel needs to really have a lot of strength and that area needs to be reinforced to distribute the loads out into the hull. In a properly designed hull, there are a series of athwartship frames that take the load out into the hull and often there is a longitudinal frame that distribues these loads fore and aft. It does not matter whether we are talking about a bolt on keel or an encapsulted keel, these framing elements are critical to achieving the necessary strength in this area of the boat almost no matter how thick you make the fiberglass.

And these athwartship members have to be connected to the ballast keel so that they take the sideward moments (bending forces) from the ballast keel and connect them to the rest of the hull.

Here's where it gets harder (but not imposible for an encapsulated keel). If you visualize a boat with an encapsulated keel at an extreme angle of heel, the weight of the ballast keel has a lot of leverage pushing against the sides of the encapsulation. The high side of the keel where the ballast ends is trying to pry the encapsulation away from the ballast. All that glues the ballast to the encapsulation typically is a polyester resin slurry. Polyester resin is not a great adhesive especially to lead or iron, and so oved time that adhesion fails.

You might think that is no big deal. The ballast is in there and where can it go. But lets go back to our earlier discussion. As I said earlier it is critical to transfer the side loads from the ballast to the athwartships frames. In a properly engineer encapsolated keel, this is done through a series of bonds.

To explain, once the ballast keel is 'glued' in place in the fiberglass keel cavity, the top of the keel is glassed over. Normally this layer is pretty thin and is only intended to keep water out of the keel and if there athwartships frames, provide bonding for the athwartships frames. Then the athwartships frames are bonded to this membrane. Done right and still intact, the ballast transfers its loads to the sides of the keel cavity, which transfers most of the loads to the athwartships frames through the membrane at the top of the keel. And there in lies the problem, once the bond between the F.G. keel and the ballast has loosened the ballast is prying the top of the keel membrane away from the side of the keel cavity and with that goes a weakening of the athwarships connection to the hull.

Walk around most any boatyard with a lucite hammer and tap out the area about 6" to a foot below the top of the ballast on any older boat with an encapsulated keel and you will find that many, if not most, have a void in this area. In fact as I have pointed out in prior discussions of this topic, over the years I have frequently walked around boat yards tapping on encapsulated keels doing an informal survey. As many as 50% percent of the encasulated keels that I have knocked on have delamination voids that were in excess of a foot in diameter, wiith many having total delamination.

Making this problem worse is that this is an area that is next to imposible to repair because once water gets in there (and it does) it is very hard to re-establish a connection between the ballast keel and the hull.

Now then run that boat aground. There's a couple things at work here. First of all, it is very hard to do a proper glassing job at the bottom of the keel. You are laying up glass in a narrow cavity that a person really can't get into very well. Although there are lots of tricks to doing the work in these tight areas, having repaired quite a few of these in my day, the glass work at the bottom of keels is very heavy, from the laps in the cloth, but not very sturdy. There are usually large lenses of unreiforced resin and sections of dry cloth.

When you run aground hard, the force generally crushes the cloth and drives the ballast upward against the membrane toward the top of the keel and the athwardhip frames, and creates a rotation that pulls downward at the forward end of the keel and upward at the aft end. Now you have a leak. Maybe small maybe large, but not one that can be easily repaired to full strength, People often think that an encapsulated keel must be stronger because the keel membrane is integral with the hull. While it is true that the keel cavity is integral with the hull, the ballast in not integral with the with the keel cavity. So it comes down to whether you trust a not extremely good glue (polyester resin) or pretty massive mechanical fasteners.

So now for the other side of the story with bolt on keels. In the case of a bolt on keel you really do have greater maintenance. The fairing materials tend to be short lived. This is a pain in the neck process and even using epoxy it has to be done every 7 to 10 years. (That said it is no worse than fixing blisters that come from moisture trapped between the keel cavity and the ballast working its way out through the not so great glasswork in the keel cavity. But not every encapsulated keel boat gets blisters while every bolt on keel boat sooner or later needs refairing.)

At some point, on most production boats with bolt on keels the SS keel bolts need to be replaced. (I have never understood why for just a little more cost the boating industry does not use Monel Keel bolts but that is another story)

When we talk about the strength of a bolt on keel we are really discussing depending on the ability to make a mechanical connection vs than a glued connection. I'm a mechanical connection kind of guy. Also The stub is generally shallow enough that you can get really good glass work and the overlaps occur so that you have the thickest amount of glass where you need it most, right at the top of the keel. Often, on better built, low volume boats, the athwartships frames are often glassed right in as the hull is being laid up. (On less expensive boats and mass produced boats the frames are generally molded separately or as part of the liner and glassed or glued in.) The keel bolts then pass through the outward turned tabbing or flanges on the frames making a solid mechanical connection.

In the same grounding as above, the metal (especially lead) absorbs much of the shock of the impact before ever distributing the loads to the keel bolts. The bolts have to distribute all of the loads in a compact area. Here is where engineering is critical and why there is nothing worse than a poorly engineered bolt on keel, and nothing better than a properly engineered one. In that impact, the aft end of the keel pushes up. In a properly engineered bolt on keel, that upward force is distributed through a solidly engineered frame at the aft end of keel which carries the loads into a wide area of the boat. Often there will be a bulkhead (seat face or other cabinetry) or massive longitudinal member tied to this frame that distributes the loads fore and aft, and a athwartships bulkhead that distributes the loads into the hull and deck. (That same structure should be there in an encapsulted keel but it absolutely needs to be there on a bolt on.)

At the forward end of the keel there needs to be a similar frame as well. This is the frame is perhaps easier to engineer. It only needs to have sufficient bearing area to not slice down through the hull and to withstand the withdrawal forces of the forward keel bolts. Lastly there is shear but that's the easy one. All it takes is enough surface area on the bolts and enough bearing plate area to prevent the bolts from acting strictly in single sheer.

Of course a proper bolt on keel requires better engineering and is probably a more expensive keel to build. The keel casting must be made carefully. The bolts, and bearing plates are expensive. Great care must be taken in boring the holes for the keel bolts and there is a lot of labor and handwork in fairing the keel.

This is why a lot of manufacturers take the short cut of doing an encapsulated keel. This is especially true of smaller production yards where the cost of precision tooling a keel casting can be exessive.

In the end it is a trade off between the maintainable and the low maintenance. Encapsulated keels are low maintenance until they can no longer be repaired. Once upon a time, wooden boats had internal ballast, but they went to bolt on keels for the same reasons outlined here.

For those of us, like myself, who tend to own older boats, I would think that the ability to repair a bolt on keel far outweighs the potentially lower maintenance of an encapsulated keel.

At least that's how I see it.
Respectfully,
Jeff

[GordMay]

Advantages of Suspended Keels (over Encapsulated):
Jeff said it much better than I would have.
I generally prefer the “transparency” of an external keel - I can easily see how it was engineered, constructed, and maintained, which is generally not as readily apparent on an encapsulated keel. You can see the keel stub force grid, the keel-stub joint fairing, and any water intrusion collects (visibly) in the bilge. The external keel stub provides a good bilge sump.
The external keel’s force grid also helps take the mast and shroud loads, minimizing the hull and deck stress and deformation.
Light groundings “bruise” an external lead keel, but could fracture the fibreglass encapsulation (with the attendant water intrusion). The fairing of the external keel-stub joint is easy to inspect & maintain when bottom painting.
An encapsulated keel requires that you install an external ground strip or plate.
In any case, the only suitable keel material is LEAD (ok, maybe uranium?) - watch out for steel/concrete internal ballast).
As is so often the case, it’s a trade-off analysis, and perhaps (like Jeff) I’m a biased towards the mechanical.
Others might make convincing arguments for encapsulated ballast.
FWIW, OMHO,
Gord May

[capt lar]

If you have an encapsulated keel and you determine there are voids, should you take steps to eliminate these voids ? I understand that water can sit down in an encapsulated keel and I assume that can cause issues over time as well. What about drain plugs for winter storage ? I understand JBoat has a small drain in the rudder to deal with their version of the latter issue.
capt lar

[chuckiebits]

Our '81 J/30 had a drain plug on the keel, about 6" below the hull, but I don't recall seeing a drain on the rudder of any of the J/24/29/30's. Of course these are all 20+ year old boats, so drains in the rudder may be something TPI have started with the more recent wave of J/boats.

And thanks for the dissertation on keels Jeff, that's all really good info for a newbie like me.

John

[capt lar]

I saw the drain on the rudder of a 90's J 38 or 40. the owner was unscrewing the small and somewhat hidden drain. He was commenting on the fact that many owners don't even know it is there. I have heard of guys just drilling a hole in the keel. most of us are reluctant to drill holes in our boats, but having water sit down in the keel is not good. A surveyor recently told me of a keel that had several gallons trapped.

capt lar