Something here. I'm rilly glad yer innerested on this remod. I do want feedback, I do want to be called on stuff. I don't want to screw up a gorgeous Alberg design. Sometimes I think the way I express my views is confusing and annoying. Even to myself. Need all the help I can get.
Capt. Tony'
Your aft bulkhead sounds like it deserves a photo here. The bulkhead is a single piece of 3/4 ply. There just might be an extra piece put in as a filler that got dislodged. There is a filler in the OB access hole, around the inside, which allowed mat to be drapped around more easyly when they were finishing the hole. But it is no bigger than the end of the cockpit. It's just filler. The space must have been thought necessary to make it easier to mate the deck/cockpit molding with the hull when assembling the boat. They allowed themselves Plenty of room.
338's sounds somewhat like yours, but I have since found that it is at right angles to the center line, meaning that it was put in square and vertical. However when the farmers put it in they cut it much too small so there was huge gaps on the edges that were indeed stuffed with unsaturated mat and roving. I tore out everything that was loose, cleaned out the holes, filled them with pints of mishmash, radiused the corners and reglassed the bulkhead with x-mat & epoxy and tabbed it to the hull.
Having no engine below, having removed the icebox which in 338 had a large hole cut in the companionway blkhd, I cut a simular hole in the port side. Tho with the seacocks and hose removed from the aft cockpit drains I discovered it was very easy to haul oneself under the c'pit and into the locker areas with the pegboard discarded - to get to the inside of the lazarette bulkhead.
After the blkhd was faired and glassed on both sides, the space between the back of the c'pit well and the blkhd was furred-out and filled and glassed to the blkhd. Did the same at the other end. Thus marrying the cockpit footwell to the bulkheads,
There are stress cracks where the rudder tube comes into the c'pit floor, where Pearson had put very little reinforcement on the underside of the deck. (More may have been a bad idea,) If I wanted to put in 'straight-thru' drains (just like the rudder tube) I felt I had to immobilized whatever possible, to the greatest extent reasonable. I glassed the tubes in first with x-mat going thru the holes with the tube and turning the mat onto the flats outside, Then I laid on another layer of mat over the pipe and up to the inside. The inside of the hull and the underside of the c'pit. Then there is the bugle-shaped sculpting (epoxy/cabosil/chopped strand) and a final layer of mat. The rudder tube got the bugle up top to match the bottom Pearson did - with extra layers of mat. Interesting that the cockpit sole still can flex when walked on - it is about 3/16s thick with strips of plywood matted to the bottom for stiffning. Not a whole lot.
There are, of course, arguable merits to leaving the cockpit suspended and semi-flexible. I chose to lock it all together because I removed the aft bridge (and Mrgnstrn was on my case) Monoque. I warn you that the grinding and prep necessary especially of the hull and the underside to the cockpit structure is beyond the pale, or pail, whatever it is, you have to be Nuts to undertakeit! I had heroic help!
.................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ...
MORE ABOUT POST #47
Way later EDIT (7/13)
Back in 2007-8 there appeared in a Seacocks thread on the Fuji Yacht Owners Forum (Fuji Yachts Home Page) an exchange
where the three tubes photo was reproduced in that thread and comments where made: anzam1 said, .... "This set up looks pretty failsafe to me and I would not be opposed to something like that on my boat."
BrianC responds: "One serious proviso.....If anyone does this !DO NOT! use all the filler this person has done to create a grossly oversized fillet. All that filler is a weak link in the system. A fillet is certainly needed (glass will not assume a sharp bend and even if it did, glass is strongest when the fibers are straight) but max 1" radius is more than si=ufficient. Even less is sufficient if the glassing is applied spiral fashion. The pix on my site do not shown the way the glass is applied so I will try and get some time shortly to do a mockup for photos that show what I am talking about."
In the thread this is quoted from, which was about thru-hulls and seacocks, nobody commented on what BrianC posted. No right-way-to-do-it
photos appeared.... that this person saw. I think most readers could see that BrianC's experience with FRP was limited. And he also did not know what the situation was under the cockpit in 'this person's' Ariel.
The bell shaped expansions at the top and bottom of the tubes (while perhaps not aesthetically pleasing) are not "FILLETS." Call them bolsters, maybe. They are reinforcement backing for inaccessible holes thru the hull - that can not have valves to shut them off if damaged. They are definitely overbuilt - they probably should be isolated with a protective bulkhead in case a battery ever gets loose when upside down at sea. BUT I thought them pleasing, if not whimsical, because I modeled my additions after Pearson's original free standing rudder tube stalagmite using their bugle reinforcement of the rudder tube where it comes into the Ariel hull at the waterline. Bettered theirs up a bit.... and buttered up the new drains made with 3/32" thick spiral wall gasline epoxy pipe -- into hollow support columns.
Epoxy is used, of course, to upgrade ancient polyester. By definition this is 'dry' construction, as opposed to wet where additions are added to green frp work as the boat is being built at factory, by my definition overbuilding is a good idea. The bell shape widens the dead loads that will occur on this cockpit floor, that also transfer to the hull.
You may notice in the photo, this cockpit has been immobilized with longitudinal bulkheads that marry the free hanging cockpit "bowl" to the hull beneath it.
The rudder tube (with its bell-shaped buildup of matt and who knows what?) was not attached (glued/glassed) to the underside of the cockpit BUT deliberately by Pearson - because Ariel cockpits are hung loose and unsupported - not attached anywhere except higher up where the molding becomes seats and bridgedeck. Had a real problem with that concept!
Since I stabilized the cockpit, I attached the rudder tube to the sole.
ALL the new bell-ends are composed of mishmash (epoxy, fumed silica, chopped strand) on top of fiberglass, as describe above here, with more glass cloth or biaxial matt on top of everything to finish. These tubes support compression loads....the cockpit floor -- in A338's case of factory encapsulated plywood strip reinforcement -- still somewhat limber...
Again, not BrianC's textbook construct. But thick backup plates of bullet-proof mishmash is not unknown (see "Fibreglass Boats, by Hugo duPlessis, AdlardColes 1966. Reinforcing frp tubes per se' is not covered there, but it has been my glass bible since the beginning.)
About as strong as I can see how to do.... on my stomach with arms genuflecting.... into that cramped (and soon to be forgotten) corner in the aft end of the cockpit! There will, of course, be an access hatch in the sole into that part of the boat - as there should be. Batteries will be under the bridge-deck where in other Ariel's an Atomic 4 was intended.
Reply With Quote