Don W wrote:
This sailboat was made in the 1970's and early 1980's, with the last
few years of production by Glastron. Supposedly they were produced in
Austin TX for a while.

I'm having a hard time finding much of anything about them on Google,
so I'm hoping that someone here used to work for Glastron, or knows the
story on them.


I don't know "the story" but am somewhat familiar with the boats. Some
of our friends have owned them.

A friend of mine has one and it looks like an interesting boat. It looks
to me like the deck was laid up with carbon fiber mat instead of glass mat.

Nah, not back in those days. I don't know if carbon fiber laminates were
even invented yet, and they definitely were not being used in small
commercially produced racer-cruisers.



Also, from what I can see, it looks like the deck is not laminated, but
instead consists of the carbon composite, with a layer of marine ply
underneath. It appears that the plywood was then "upholstered" with a
layer of foam, and then a covering of upholstery vinyl.

It was (and is) pretty common to lay up fiberglass over plywood, but
usually the builder puts glass over both sides. In fact, since the
underside is the tension wall, it would be better structurally to put
glass underneath than above (if you were only going to do one side). But
as you noted, fiberglass is pretty strong. Is the plywood in sections?
There may be integrally molded structural members between ply sections.



The boat I was looking at had the vinyl stripped off exposing the marine
plywood underneath. The plywood had been removed in places exposing the
black roving underneath.


I wonder if the black color is due to the type of glue they used to
secure the plywood, or something in the resin.

Anyway, I'm 100% certain that it is not carbon fiber, unless your
friend's boat was seriously rebuilt by a fanatic. Is the weight
dramatically less than it should be? Is the boat one heck of a speedster?

Fresh Breezes- Doug King