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

[ebb]

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!

[captain crunchie]

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.

[captain crunchie]

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.

[Scott Galloway]

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.

[commanderpete]

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.

[captain crunchie]

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.