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I found quite a bit of water seeping from the corroded thru hulls of the 18 Outrage I am restoring.

I Used a number of approaches to dry the hull.

Since I am completely restoring this boat everything was removed, all screws, hardware, floor, gas tank... everything.

Then I weighted the boat to determine as I proceeded if indeed I was making progress.

I have access to an industrial air compressor system with an air dryer which removes the moisture from the air down to a -40 degree dewpoint (a very low RH or very very dry air). I sealed the boat with plastic and introduced the dry air (regulated to 2 psi) thru one of the thru hulls and allowed the interior to dry over a week to ten days. During this process I added a small heater in the interior to keep the air warm. So effectively the interior of the boat, all open screw holes (and there were lots of them) and the thru hull fitting were bathed in dry air. I do have to admit that while this approach seemed great, it only dried the surfaces.

Next I reamed out the foam from around all of the thru hulls. This I did to remove the foam which was most saturated and to provide space to seal these opening independent of the metal sleeve to be installed later. I then rigged a plug on one side of the thru hull and a second plug on the other side with a 1/4" poly tubing coming out of it. With a little silicone this sealed the interior of the thru hull and created a chamber into the foam layer between the hull and the interior FG. I applied a vacuum to the poly line and installed a "knock-out" bottle between the plug and the vacuum pump. This worked well and while I did not measure the water that came out, I did measure the differential weight which was 40#. That's 8 gallons.

I then centered a teflon rod thru the thru hull opening and injected heavy epoxy into the voids created by the removal of the foam. This created a complete seal of the thru hull openings and the metal sleeve will be added in order to keep the boat original.

Was it worth it? Well it does give me peace of mind that I'm working with likely the driest hull I can have and it won't happen again.