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It's good to hear that Aldura is at least addressing this potential problem.
I'm not an engineer, but it seems to me that foam-disk bulkheads might
compress too much to offer real support.
A thin-walled cylinder, with enough load in one area (on-plane in a 1' chop
with 5 passengers), would seem to offer little resistance to compression and
deflection. Cycled enough times the deflection could ultimately cause thin
5052 to fail right where the material had been sharply creased into a V-rib.
In my case, I had a crack on the crease and water intrusion weeks before it
ultimately collapsed. I had told Aldura this before the tube collapsed. It
would seem to me that you either need to make it thicker or offer rigid
support in this area.
Maybe an engineering person out there could comment.
Thanks,
Eric Rahkola
Fascination - Ocean Alexander 42
Seattle
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Dubnoff" <>
>
> I was intrigued by this and forwarded Eric's post to the manufacturer. I
> received the following response:
>
> >>>
> Thank you very much for bringing the article to my attention. The writer
> Eric Rahkola hit an object hard and bent the port side bottom rib about 2
> ft from the aft, and it was cracked about 2" long at that point. He was
> not very happy that he got charged for the repair. There are dozens of
> these earlier models out there, none has any problem. Some people, after
> owning an Aldura 13 for one year, ordered a second one for their children.
>
> We are constantly improving our boats. Now, the ribs are deeper and wider
> and there are foam discs placed towards the aft ends of the tubes. User
> friendly, trouble free, excellent boats is our goal. This summer I saw the
> boat that I left to my relatives 10 years ago when I was sailing by,
> bashed up but still very much in use. They are good life rafts too.
>
> >>>>
>
> Thus, while they have not acknowledged that there was a problem with
> Eric's boat, they have beefed up their construction. I am looking forward
> to kicking their tires at the Seattle Boat Show.
>
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