thru-hulls, delamination and fiberglass work - oh, my!

This is what we're looking at on Augusta, Commander #303. You can see the damaged area at the waterline on the right of the picture. This one has about everythign worng with it that you might not want: the hull was punched through below the waterline, there was a bad repair and extensive delamination behind the bulkhead and on the interior of the hull and then they put a truly bad Rustoleum paint job on top of it.

We have stripped the hull of the old paint & gotten an idea of the size of the hole - next step is to tackle that problem. I'll make sure to include shots of the interior - that's where things get really interesting.

Looks exciting.
What are you going to do?
How are you approaching the repair?

We're approaching the repair pretty much by the book, at least the book I've read. As the bulkhead is dry rotted, we'll have to pull that out on the Port side. The damaged section goes underneath & behind the bulkhead. Hopefully, that won't be much more than cutting the tabbing and then sanding it down behind it.

As for the damage, we've beeen sanding away until we hit true glass (not delaminated) and then angling it out at about 30 degrees. So far, we haven't even peeled away everything from the inside yet and we have a 5 foot by 1 foot area sanded away, going through 3 layers of roving and matting so far. That took about 4 hours with 40 grit sandpaper on a random orbital sander hooked up to a vacuum system. Itchy stuff all the same.

That's when the problem started looking really huge. The delaminatiion just didn't seem to have an end. So we sanded down the exterior hull and assessed it.

The next step is to sound out the bondo, find where the actual hole is and knock out the patch material. Then we sand thru on both sides (interior & exterior), until we find true glasss all around the repair. One there, we'll drill holes, mount sheet metal on the outside of the hull and start building up the repair from the inside the same way it was built: fiberglass, roving, matting, fiberglass, etc.

Once that's been done, we reinstall the bulkhead (marine ply) and start making it look pretty.
Any input on this would be greatly appreciated. It's a big job.

Tilley hats off to you, captain crunchie, for giving a grand old lady a home, and the love, respect, and proper care that she deserves.

Salut! :)

Sounds pretty straight forward.
Sounds like you don't have a cave in, ie broken and semi crushed laminate pushed in. If you have displaced furniture that was tabbed in by Pearson you have a problem. All the tabbing is done on 338 on the top only with blue gobs used to hold whatever piece when the guy set it in place. So, while daunting, it can be removed. It looks like the crush was reduced by the built-ins inside, the settee? it looks like only unsupported hull was smooched.
............................But if you do have something bad......here's some thoughts............
338 is nude inside at cost of a great deal of grinding and evil dust. So I can say, the best thing to do would be to stabilize the whole wound inside with an overlapping piece of xmatt (mat with two crossed layers of oriented strand loosely sewn together.) It's easy to wet out. With a piece of plastic over it you could even apply some pressure on it with a firm cushion or something, braced from the opposite side - to get any pieces to lie flat. If there is laminate seperating, maybe just get it good and wet befor the mat goes on, that's the way to do it anyway: wet the hull, position the fabric on, wet it out with brushes.*

After it is set and dry, then you can grind and explore outside knowing the shape is stablized.
You have to grind beyond the damage zone on to good stuff all around.
What you find will dictate whether the damage has to come out, ie a hole (but, of course you have already shut the hole and more or less have the shape - so you can grind off the broken pieces. You will be finding white glass in there, which is ok, as long as it is stiff and sound.

If you were plugging a hole like a thruhull, you'ld grind a very flat taper, twice as wide as the hole, first on one side and then the other, and layer in disks of cloth or xmat that overlapped the hole smallest first and out to the largest. Four, five, six a side. Ending up with the same thickness of the hull where the hole was.

Same thing with the wound in her side. The overlapping on to undamaged laminate is very important, I think. Depending on whether you have a large hole or a small one, the overlapping and layering should IMCO be exaggerated. Depending on the hole, as much as 12." However, you can gain all the strength you need by adding extra layers inside. Tabbing the furniture back in place will create a lot of stiffning. and support.
You could even glass in some ribs.

338's hull is pretty thin where you have damage. So the overlapping outside can't be many layers if this is the case with yours. Xmatt creats thickness and great strength. Depending on the 'weight' four to six layers yeilds 1/4" thickness approximately. Can ofcourse use cloth. And can always grind it off.

You could check your curves by taking the curves exactly opposite on the port side using posterboard and cardboard, To help keep the layering within the parameters. Doesn't HAVE to be exact, later there is filling with easy to sand microballoons and longboarding.

*This xmat fabric has another attribute you wouldn't dare try with woven fiberglass. But you have to have everything marked with a sharpie and the matt cut to the shape you want. Place the mat on a flat surface that has plastic on it (visqueen, the more mills the better) Paint an epoxy puddle on the plastic, lay the piece in it and wet it out. Then peel the wet cloth carefully away, may take four hands, and slap it on the work. If you do it without worrying, it'll hardly get distorted. Use your rubber glove hands to pat the entrapped air out and press it tightly. Use a wet brush to stipple remaining bubbles out (hardly any) and to get the frayed edges to lay down. :eek

OK, Here's another.
I use cabosil alot. It is a lighter than air white dust that you mix directly in to the epoxy. I mix it in until I have 'stiff peaks' like they say of beaten egg whites. If you have an uneven surface, like I imagine your crunched side to be after you clean it up - even some edges that don't meet so good but are yet still strong - you paint raw mixed epoxy on the surface getting into all cracks, then you paper towel the wetness off. Important.
Using a spatula spread the gel over the imperfections and into the cracks, immediately lay your wetted xmatt or similar over it, as above. You could then have a nearly smooth and maybe pretty fair surface to finish off with the overlapping layers.

I use non-blushing (laminating epoxy with slow hardner) 100% solids (no solvents, very little odor) product. It means I can stop, come back the next day and continue. If I miss a couple days I just scuff it with 40 grit and continue on. My ergonomic handled Sandvic carbide scrapers cut right thru hardened glass. Mo'betta than that Makita grinder and hard lapped sanding disks whot gets trillions of nasty glass pieces everywhere and floating in the air..............man...i... been duin..... this....too long..(croak)...

wow - thanks so much. I think that'll be a great help.

I was at the boat today - here are the result of the last sanding session. The overall damaged area - still trying to find where the delaminated glass ends. We're going to remove that bulkhead this week and we're going to consider ebb's advice as we go forward. Thanks, ebb.

The second shot give a good sense of the thru-hull hole. That's where the bondo is.

The third shot is just a sample of the all-too-familiar delaminated glass.

More to come as we go.

On a positive note, the brightwork is looking fantastic and we casted a new eyehole for the boom that will replace the connection that broke on us recently. More on that later - my partner had a very good idea.

Those are great dramatic photos for sure,
Wonder what caused it?
Think the boat fell? Can't imagine hitting a piling while sailing that would produce such a hickey.
Hurricane damage?

Who knows. But I was talking with another guy about your little problem, with a guy who is present at the yard every day, not like me only weekends.
He mentioned a legendary local very high end fiberglass guy had been working on a Bar Tender at the far end of the yard, that I saw come in with extreme rock damage to the underwater areas. Extreme, this hull is 3/4s to 1" thick, so I imagime there was a lot of white delaminate (roving and matt) showing once it was cleaned up. Bummed I wasn't around. Becaause....

Evidently he used a vacuum bag technique, that I know nothing about, and vinylester. Vacuum to drive the resin deep as possible in to the delaminations - and vinylester because it sets up right away and you can shape and go on to the next step. Took him two days!!!

Of course there ALWAYS is another way to get a job done - but IF you have hull shape and a lot breaking (but with good hull 'integrity') as what it looks like in your photos, vacuum bagging may be the only way to resaturate fibers deep into the structure. Don't know that anybody has talked about such a technique here, and you don't need a college degree to figure it out since so many peaple do it ---- maybe that's the way to go? My guess is the decison is based on how much fiber you have to fill, and how to get in to fill it. The applique' way described above would require that all loose stuff be dug out and ground away. Deep gouges could have chopped strand mix pressed in to them, followed by cabosilgel and mat layers. Vacuum bagging is way more sophisticated, if appropriate. Wonder how he spanned the holes?

If the breaks are essentially broken but connected shards with relatively little fiber showing AND a not so thick a laminate (3/8s / 1/2"), a variation on my last post might be easier.

I, for one, am very curious just how much damage your gelcoat removal will reveal. And what you decide to do.
Your solution, method and progress photos of such extensive damage repair will be most instructive and no doubt very well visited in the archives by many in the present millennium! :D

Hmmm.... Vacuum-bagging - I need to look into that. Our thought was to tear away all of the imperfect glass and rebuild it. The less glass to sand, the happier I am. Last time, me & my partner wound up looking like frosted flakes more than captain crunchies and itched like mental patients (thank you, Commander Pete for that turn o' phrase) for a few days. I itched in places I didn't know I had places to itch.

As for the damage, I think this is was a full-speed run aground right in our harbor. He would have had to haul it out quick and there wasn't really any internal water damage. The harbor around the east side of City Island is full of big rocks and the high- and low-tide can vary as much as 8-10 feet. I think our previous owner (I have a lot of names for him, but we'll call him) Fred, wasn't much of a sailor. Even if he was a good sailor, coming in at night, those rocks aren't illuminated. I think one of those stopped our boat when it was going 5 knots or more.

Which I also think is a seperate incident from a straight-on whack to a bulkhead - it's the right height and the bow pulpit was mangled. But at least that's an easier repair...

Either way, it's all guesswork. I'm sure my partner's got another theory.

Like so many others, our boom came off in my partners hand one day in the yard (has this happened to anyone at sea?) and we aren't replacing the whole thing just yet.

We're trying a cheapo fix to the boom eyelet problem - a friend that's a metals guy bored out the back of the original piece and cut a counter sink made out of hardened steel into it. The original bolt should fit that. It's quick and cheap and gets our boom back on, but we'll have to wait until next season to see how well it works. If it doesn't, our friend says he'll bore one out of stainless steel for us.

At least it's solved for now.

I have been working on my boom also as documented in another thread. I am not sure which part you mean when you refer to the "boom eyelet".

If this part of the gooseneck assembly that connects the boom to the mast or another part. If you are referriing to the gooseneck locate don teh forweard end of the boom, see the recent gooseneck thread?

It sounds like you might be referring to the Roller Reefing Gooseneck shaft, which looks like an arrowhead and connects the boom's gooseneck casting and the spring behind it to the to the car (toggle) located on the mast track.

That Roller Reefing Gooseneck Shaft (arrowhead) part number PP-B2 sells from Rig Rite for $49.00.

The extruded gooseneck toggle 1 1/2 inch part number PP-B4 as pictured on the gooseneck thread sells from Rig Rite for $45.00.

Unfortunately I have not found a souce for the specific gooseneck casting used on the Pearson Ariel boom.

If the eyelet is yet another part that might fail, I would be interesting knowing which part failed you since I have my boom off the boat at present.

I dunno Cap. I think you've ground down the inside enough. After you start slapping down some layers of glass on the inside, the hull will be a hell of alot stronger than when it left the factory. It wouldn't bother me at all to encase those areas of Bondo or Marine-Tex under big sheets of glass.

On the outside, the more you grind the more you have to build up. It may take a couple of times to get it fair. If the prior repair is stable (not crumbly falling out) I wouldn't do much on the outside.

Add strength on the inside and smooth on the outside.

I couldn't believe how easy this was. i thought it was going to be a nightmare because every book I have ever read about it says you should sand down the tabs to remove interior pieces. Some suggested a Sawzall, but it seemed like it would do a lot more damage than anything and we still wanted the old bulkhead as a template for the new one that we wanted to put in.

We used my brother's Dremel. It let me get into tight spaces, to cut the tabs and only the tabs, and to remove the whole bulkhead and berth intact. It took about 2 hours at a pretty easy pace. Next, we'll use a cold chisel to get rid of the extra tabbing and sand it fair. In fact, we used a cold chisel to knock out some of the trickier angles. Almost no dust.

Man, it felt good to rip out that bulkhead. Now we've got a clear working area around our puncture, can replace the dry-rotted bulkhead and replace the old plastic laminate with something more to our liking.

Love that Dremel.