How to open a can of worms, boat edition

OffshoreDrilling

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HVAC Guy
Aug 28, 2007
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Homer Glen
My boat has a soft spot on the bow on the starboard side. This usually means one of two things: the fiberglass is delaminated from the coring or the core is wet and rotted as well which causes delamination. It's basically, good news all around. Boat topsides are always constructed with coring which is a layer of fiberglass, a layer of end grain balsa or synthetic product and another layer of fiberglass. This saves a lot of weight in areas where the boat doesnt need to be extremely strong.

Looking at the spot last weekend, it seemed to be smaller than I had remembered it, which i was thrilled about. You could push in or hear the difference in sound with a hammer in a roughly 24x18 section of the bow and there is spiderweb cracking of the gel coat in the area. I knew it would be wet a bit outside the obvious area so I marked a section initially about 24x24 and started cutting with my bosch oscillating tool. I wrested with the skin for a bit to get it pried up, dry areas are still bonded to it, and found the wood was wet further outside the area.

Before cutting more i drilled holes until i found what i thought was dry wood. Another 24x24" ish section cut out and skin peeled off. Wood still wet further up and below. Fuck. All said and done i have a section just over 7' long and 3' wide cut off.

Heres the fun stuff so far:

After the first two cuts. The final cut goes to within 8-10" of the windshield and another foot or so toward the bow. the skin is flipped upside down to the right of the hole there.
f0MYyTP.jpg


got rot? You can see how wet the wood is, the dry stuff is really light colored.
2pxyPKI.jpg


and this is what im dealing with even after i got done cutting. Luckily there are some fiberglass ribs in the structure tying the inner and outer pieces together when they were molded. I dug out the wet stuff about an inch back from where its being poked and got to solid glass.
https://instagram.com/p/BSpboR8lsVy/
 

OffshoreDrilling

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HVAC Guy
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Homer Glen
I'll take pictures of the repair process as much as I can. It's a dirty, messy job and im not going to yank off my gloves every three minutes to snap pics. Came home covered in fiberglass and gelcoat dust. My whole body itches. Bringing out a tyvek suit when i get to grinding and sanding. I got by on a dust mask and safety glasses for today.
 

OffshoreDrilling

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Homer Glen
usually its from deck fittings. There are literally hundreds of holes drilled through the deck and they all have to be sealed perfect or this will happen over time. The rot is in an odd spot though. its tough to explain how the construction of this area of the deck is but its isolated from any holes except for the bow hatch window and maybe the windshield mounts. The damage is kind of at the low spot which is where i assume the water settled after time.
 

OffshoreDrilling

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Homer Glen
that boat is lucky to have you as an owner, vs everyone else who would have junked'r

i think most people just ignore shit until it becomes an "actual" problem. like, someone put their foot all the way through the glass into the cabin.

Material costs haven't been TERRIBLE so far, about $280. Its the labor thats a son of a bitch when getting things fixed.
 

OffshoreDrilling

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Wow, that looks like one hell of a project. Props to you man. Once fixed do you lay new glass, sand, and gel coat? Lots of work.

thanks hah. I have to say theres very few things any more, if any, that im afraid to tackle on my own as long as i have the tools.

The process goes like this, generally:
-drill exploratory holes through the skin to determine what condition the core is in as far as wetness and the area it extends
-cut skin off (can be done from underside as well but its way too hard working overhead)
-get out all the rotten and wet wood, dry out the acceptable areas. Im leaving the shrink wrap on the front of the boat to shield it from the elements and bake it out like an oven.
-sand inner skin and outer skin
-put a skim coat of epoxy on the inner skin much like laying tile
-set new coring material over the skim coat
-fill gaps in coring material with thickened epoxy. The balsa comes cut in 1x1 squares attached to a thin fabric to hold it together to allow it to contour over shapes. all the gaps left open need to be filled.
-skim coat of epoxy over the top of the coring
-apply top skin
-clamp or weights on top of the skin to hold it together until epoxy cures
-grind all the seams at a 10:1 slope
-build up fiberglass tape and resin in all the ground seams until its flush with the top of the skin
-sand sand sand sand sand to make everything level
-prime all the bare fiberglass
-apply non-skid over all the seams. im just going to do the whole panel so it looks more uniform.


thats all. :bowrofl:

its going to be a 4 separate day project. get the coring in and skins on 1 day, glass all the seams day 2 , sand that shit and prime day 3, non-skid day 4
 

OffshoreDrilling

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Homer Glen
More fun today. Cut back EVEN MORE fiberglass. Its to within an inch of the windshield now.

I also found the source of water intrusion. One itty bitty screw hole for the windshield. It looks like they missed lining up the windshield and put a screw in, took it back out and moved it back 1/2 and inch but never fixed the hole.

ONE SCREW HOLE

ExLrD1s.jpg
 
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