We are on the planning phase of this repair. The boat had suffered damage to the bowsprit in the past and this segment of the deck had been cut away to make a repair from inside the chain locker. A triangular piece of thick glassed ply had been roughly bonded in place; you can see it in these pictures. To finish this work, we will initially have to work from within the cramped confines of the chain locker using the tiny doors for access to the underside of the deck.        

Our initial approach is to reinforce the underside of the fore deck by adding ply and epoxy to the chain locker. This will bond to the recently added fiberglass laminated panel that you can see under the damaged deck. Once done, we will examine the deck core around this area before deciding on whether to open it up and replace it or perform local core repairs. 

It looks like the ply core around this damaged area has let in water and decayed the plywood core. Once the deck area is sound and the chain locker ceiling is solid, we can fabricate a new bowsprit support plate and bond it in place. The bow appears to be solid and undamaged.             

February 2019 – Bow repair progress.

In order to strengthen the fore deck and chain locker roof before we tackle the main bow repairs, we are adding new marine ply inside the cramped confines of the chain locker. This will tie in with the existing thick ply repair piece already in place and also bond to the hull sides. First things first; cut a template and then marine ply to suit.

Due to the restricted access inside the chain locker, we had to fit the fly in two pieces the a lap joint. The ply is half inch thick marine so we’ll add a second layer, reverse run next before glassing in the sides to form a strong box with the hull. All this is being done from inside the chain locker, working overhead!

Once this has been done, we will be able to start work on the bow repair from the outside and have a strong substrate to work with. At the same time, we may open up some of the fore deck to check for core damage.

April 2019

New plywood under fore deck (chain locker cealing) has been glassed in to the hull all around. We now have a solid foundation to build on. Now it’s time to work on the boat repair from the outside!

June 2019

We cut out the outer skin of the deck where we suspected the deck core was rotten. We then tried to lift the outer fiberglass skin to expose the core. The plan was to remove the skin in one piece to bond it back down to the new core once replaced. Well, that plan did not worked out and we ended removing the outer fiberglass skin of the deck in pieces leaving us with a major fiber glass repair in front of us!!

But at least we are now able to see the extent of the core damage and plan a repair strategy. With luck, we should be able to cut out the damaged balsa core material in this area, replace the plywood reinforcing panel and re-skin the deck. The surface underneath has already been strengthened so we know we have a sound base. It may be best to carry out the repair in two stages; first on the section shown above, then remove a smaller section aft of this first cut. Hopefully, the center plywood panel is the main issue on the second stage.