In Part 1 of this series about repairing a delaminated deck, I showed how I find the problem areas. If you missed it, you can see the video here. This is Part 2 of the series, where I show you how to cut out the top layer of fiberglass then remove and replace the damaged core material. Watch the YouTube here
Removing a damaged core section
When we bought Cups, she had teak decks, which was one of things that sold us on her. Teak is certainly beautiful, but does have a few shortcomings - as we found out after being aboard a few years. It is heavy and adds considerable weight; it gets quite hot in the tropical sun – so much so that we often needed to wear deck shoes when walking on it; and it requires a fair amount of maintenance to keep the caulked joints in good repair. The biggest problem, however, was due to the 3,000 or so screws that attach it to the fiberglass deck. Over time, especially as the boat flexes with the motion of the seas, moisture works its way under the teak, finds its way to a few of those screw holes and eventually migrates into the core. The core gets wet, possibly causing the layers to weaken the bonding and separate – also called delamination, which is very hard to detect under the teak. The water continues to work its way downhill until it finds an opening in the lower layer of fiberglass, perhaps dripping inside the boat.
Once in Colombia and once in Panama, we carefully removed sections of the teak, cut out a section of fiberglass, repaired the core, and then put it all together again. When it started leaking in yet another place, we decided it was time to remove the teak entirely, repair any damaged sections of the core, then fare and paint the decks. It turned out quite nicely, but a few years later, we discovered a few other sections of the deck that also needed repair. We repaired the worst of them in New Zealand a few years ago, and another couple of areas in Fiji, intending to get the last of them when we had the time and opportunity. Well, now is as good a time as ever to finish that job up before we officially begin marketing her.
The decks on most fiberglass boats – Cups included - consist of a top layer of fiberglass laminated to a wood core, which is then laminated to another layer of fiberglass on the bottom side. The wood core stiffens and reinforces the two layers of fiberglass while adding minimal weight. When moisture makes its way into the core, it sometimes causes the wood and/or the bond between the fiberglass and wood to deteriorate. If the deterioration gets bad enough, the deck will begin to weaken and flex, and eventually become spongy.
The next few blogs will describe how to find and repair deck problems. This week, I'll describe how to detect problems in the deck. The method involves tapping the deck with a small hammer or mallet and listening carefully to the sound the hammer produces. An area of delamination will have a very different sound than a good section of deck. Check out this YouTube to see how I tap a deck.
In Marcie's recent blog about our trip down the Wild Coast to East London, she mentioned we broke a few sail slides – 12, in fact. While it isn't all that unusual to break a few sail slides, this may be a new record for Nine of Cups.
One side of each sail slide is attached to the mainsail with webbing. The other side of the slide is t-shaped, and fits into a groove, or track, on the mast. As the name implies, the sail slides slide up and down inside the track, allowing the sail to be raised and lowered. I use mainly nylon sail slides, with the occasional stainless version at high stress points. The nylon sail slides can handle anything the mainsail is likely to encounter, unless the sail starts to flog. The stainless slides are indestructible, but have a tendency to jam-up when trying to reef or lower the sail off the wind, so I use them sparingly. I prefer replacing the occasional broken sail slide to being unable to lower the sail when it's time to reef down.
I keep an inventory of sail slides on hand. I had 20 spares when we left Tasmania a couple of years ago, but when I checked my parts bin, I found I was down to only nine, two of which were stainless. It is rare that we break more than a couple on a passage, so normally nine sail slides would have been more than enough, but obviously not this time. Unless we wanted to repair our Yamaha outboard, East London doesn't have much in the way of boat parts, so we weren't able to find anything locally, and having something shipped in could potentially cause us to miss the next weather window. Marcie reminded me, however, that the sail slides on the storm trysail were the same size – I could 'borrow' some from it. Since we weren't likely to need our storm sails between here and Cape Town, this seemed like a good plan.
It took an afternoon to make the repairs. The process is simple enough – cut the stitching that holds the webbing, remove the broken slide, then hand stitch the new one in place. We've done it enough times that we actually have a 'How-To' video on the subject. I also discovered two broken and one missing batten, which we will do without until Cape Town.
The other problems were easy to fix:
Malfunctioning vacuum gauge on the engine fuel system – swapped it out with the spare
Handheld autopilot remote was flaky – cleaned the contacts on the cockpit connectors
AIS info not being displayed on the Nav station chartplotter – corrected a baud rate setting that somehow changed since the last time it was used.
All in all, not a bad list of repairs for our passage down the Wild Coast.
Hi there and welcome to Just A Little Further!
We are David and Marcie Lynn and we've lived aboard our Liberty 458 cutter-rigged sailboat since 2000.
What began as an urge to travel slowly and economically at our own pace ended up an adventure of a lifetime.
Well, here we are ... nearly 90,000 miles under the keel, 5 continents, 5 Great Southern Capes, 36 countries and almost two decades later, still taking one passage at a time and going just a little further.
