does older cuben hold water more than new cuben?

I lent my duomid to my brother this past weekend and clipped in the duo innernet for him (which has only been out a handful of times) – the cuben on the bottom of that is SOOOO different now than the cuben in the duomid! I do think it's worn out – it does have that look and feel of all those cuben stuff sacks that are wearing thin. When he gets back I'll see if a photo does it justice – but honestly I didn't really notice just HOW worn it was until I clipped that relatively unused cuben-floored inner net in there and saw the two side by side. It is also quite dirty tho – I'm sure a good wash will do it good anyway. And at this point I'm not going to replace it just yet. Maybe before spring, or before Ron's wait list gets super long. But then I'll have to see if the cuben Deschutes or something else strikes my fancy……

I bought an Ultamid 2 in 2013.  It has about 50 very hard nights on it and seemed fine when I stored it last year.  Used it last week on a 5 day packrafting trip and noticed that the white cuben has turned brownish yellow consistently all over, except for under the top vents.  This indicates that it is UV caused, but I must say the evenness of the discolouring is not like the usual unenven fading one sees with other materials affected by sunlight.

I gave it a good washing but to no effect.

I created a bowl shape with a random area and pushed it halfway into a glass and filled the cuben with water and let it sit about 2 mintues and sure enough there were a few drops of water in the glass. Perhaps new cuben would leak this much as I am unsure of the hydrostatic pressure created by and inch of water with a surface area the size of a glass, but I would expect not to leak so quickly and to such a degree.

I live, hike and camp in northern Canada where rain and drizzle are are far more common than sunny.  The tent has had no more than 10 days of UV exposure.

The only other notable thing that comes to mind is the my final trip last year involved a salt water crossing canoe and all things got wet.  I did not remove and wash my tent afterwards – perhaps the salt did the damges, but that does not reconcile with the white areas under the vents.  Maybe it was combination of UV and salt water.  I don’t know.

I do know that I have cared for this tent very carefully and am disappointed to see it apparently deteriorate so quickly.

Anyone with similar experiences.

Thanks in advance

Derrick