Soft Spot – Part 2
I doubt I could get all the water out of the core. But it seemed to be doing pretty good, so I started phase 2 – get some epoxy back in.
Despite my best efforts to avoid it, I felt it best to add more holes to the top of the deck. Casey had recommended the holes be no more than 5″ apart. The directions on epoxy I picked up at West Marine suggested 1″.
New holes drilled, I again put in some acetone to see which ones allowed it to soak through and which just puddled on top. I figured the latter wouldn’t do me much good. I got the 3M epoxy, the stuff that would harden more quickly, and patched those holes on top. I then checked underneath and patched another hole I’d just created that went through. Of course, I still missed one of the holes underneath and ended up pouring alot of the deck epoxy down into the cabin and onto the carpet on the inside wall. Luckily, the acetone cleaned it up quite well.
Other oops I did was not wear gloves right away. I ended up with alot of goo on my hands.
The directions stated to not mix more than the amount of epoxy that you could use in 15 minutes. So I mixed about a cup and a half (2:1) in a disposable plastic container. I then grabbed one of the syringes I’d also picked up at West Marine and headed topside.
I started on the lower end/aft on the deck. I found that trying to pull the plunger to get the goo in didn’t work very well, so I poured it in. Since the plastic container was quite bendable, and the syringe reservoir was fairly wide (about 1/2″?), that didn’t prove to be too much of a problem.
Some of the holes took it readily – too readily – which is how I found the one hole underneath I hadn’t plugged. But others still took it pretty easily. For others, I had to squirt a little bit, let it soak in, and add more. I squirted about even amounts in the slower holes, more in the fast ones, putting about half the goo into the holes on the after side of the repair. I then refilled the container and did the top half.
I did use the boat hooks to press the lower side up, since that side was more pliable than the deck. The directions do suggest putting weight on the deck to press it down. But it took a few days until I figured out that I could probably take the weights off the barbell at home to use for that purpose. Until then, I couldn’t think of anything to use that would withstand the weather and not slip off.
The whole thing made about 4 cups of goo. I squirted it all in, still not sure if that was enough. I’m guessing that, if I ever sell the boat, or whenever I get the rigging replaced, this repair will need to be redone. Hopefully not. But we’ll see.
The directions say that it will set in a few days at 72 degrees. Since it’s winter, and our highs are in the 40’s, and because I”m out of town now, the next stage – putting epoxy in the holes I created and around the fitting hole – will have to wait a couple of weeks anyway.
Soft Spot – Part I
It was going to be a quick repair – honest! OK. Not really. I knew it wouldn’t be.
So, I went to pump the septic out of my boat. We pulled up to the pump-out station and I tried to get the cap off. I couldn’t. Erik tried. He couldn’t. I asked Doug, the marina owner and not a small man. He couldn’t budge it either. The deck hardware was going to need to be replaced.
That was towards the middle of the summer. I avoided the problem all summer long. Towards fall, I talked with Doug and ordered replacement deck hardware.
Skip back a few years, to when I bought the boat.
One of the items on my boat survey was the soft spot on my deck. It’s very obvious, you can press up from below without a problem; you can see the spring in the deck when you step on it.
My boat was built before the days of refuse tanks. In those days, the toilet waste went directly into the water. Gross, huh?
Well, at some point, someone added a tank and the deck hardware for pumping out the tank.
Those who have read my blog awhile know that when I put the speakers in, I sealed the inside of the hole with epoxy to guard against water damage to the core. The folks that put the hole in for the pump out were not as careful. Or maybe they actually believed that the deck hardware would seal against moisture. Well, it didn’t work. The moisture got in and I have about a 3′ long soft spot in the deck.
So, now that I have to replace the deck hardware, it’s also time I need to take care of the soft spot in the deck.
I took out my handy dandy Complete Illustrated Sailboat Maintenance by Don Casey. He suggests:
- Tap the surface with the handle of screwdriver to determine the extent of the delamination
- Drill 3/8″ holes just inside the delamination pattern
- Blow through a vinyl hose placed in the lowest hole on the deck and see if air comes out of each of the other holes. If not, drill another hole closer in the center of the pattern.
- Make no hole more than 5″ from another
- Put epoxy into the holes using a syringe
- Put something heavy on the deck to press against the new core
- Repair the holes
I talked with Doug and he suggested just getting the kind of syringe you find a dentist’s office, with some vinyl tubing and just force the epoxy into the cavity through the hole already in the deck for the deck hardware. But, as I said, the soft spot was about 3′ long, so I didn’t think that would work.
I’m doing things just a little bit different here. I really don’t want to put that many holes in my deck, if I can avoid it.
I started by removing the deck hardware last week, then putting the heater on in the head, in an attempt to dry up some of the moisture. It did dry up the stuff next to the hole. But, as I said, the dampness went in quite a ways.
This week, I started by drilling holes from the bottom, to see if I could determine the extent of the damange that way, before drilling on the deck. I started about a foot from the pump-out hole and worked my way aft. In the end, I found that the damage went as far as the aft spreader. That made sense. Along with the poorly done hole in the deck, some owner had put some sort of epoxy around the base of two of the spreaders. Little did they know, or take the time to take care of, the real reason there was moisture in the core.
I determined where the damage stopped by seeing if the core material I was pulling out was damp or not.
Once I determined the extent, I went topside and started drilling holes about 8″ apart around the edges. I filled the bottom holes with paper towels and took a syringe and started filling it with acetone and squirting it into the holes. This was also suggested by Don Casey’s book as a way to dry out the core.
Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll repair the holes inside the boat and cover the outside ones with tape. I have a piece of plastic covering the large hole to prevent rain from getting in. Next week, I’ll put the epoxy into the upper holes.
