I have an opportunity to acquire a Fairweather Mariner 39. It may be the last FWM to come out of a mold.

The boat is a bare hull and deck. It has been in that condition for well on 20 years -- tucked away in someone's back yard.

After inspecting it, I have qualms because it lacks stringers inside the hull. The descriptions I've seen describe the hull as having both horizontal and vertical stringers. I could add stringers, but getting a good longitudinal bond to 20-year-old resin might be next to impossible.

If someone doesn't rescue her, she'll be chopped up in place. She otherwise looks pristine, but I can't devote a year or two of effort to completing her if her stringerless hull is going to oil-can and twist itself apart in a seaway. Has anyone built a FWM as a kit? Did you have to add stringers?

Does anyone know the story of stringers in the FWM hull? I can't imagine that they are molded in - and concealed so well that I can't see them through bare fiberglass and resin.

Thanks!

Patrick,

Contact me by email at  bud@westsail.com, or by phone 714-549-9331, and I will try to help you out.  Unfortunately, there is not too much construction information available on the W39, since only a few were built by Westsail in the months before the 1977 bankruptcy, and I do not believe that a construction manual was created. 

Ed Parker, from P&M Worldwide did buy the W39 molds from the subsequent sale of the Westsail molds in 1980, and laminated a few boats as kits.  He shipped the molds over to Taiwan to have a few built there where he supervised the construction.

Years later a number of them were imported into the US, called the Fairweather Mariner 39.  These were built by the yard there for another US importing group.