E35 Help and suggestions...

[Chiquita]

Hey all, My name is Don. My wife and I own a beautiful Endeavour 35 for the last 5 years. I recently have noticed soft spots around the mast approx 2 feet from the mast in most directions. Can I get some advice on how to handle this. Is this an insurance item? The wood is soft and moist and I afraid its going to get worst if I don't tackle it now. Thanks to all in advance for any help. Have a great day. Don

[xort]

Sounds like core rot. Water has entered the wood in between the inner and outer fiberglass. There are a lot of threads here on delamination or fiberglass deck repairs. You will likely need to get at the soft wood and remove it, replace that with new wood or other filler and then cover back up with fiberglass. Not a 'difficult' job, just a time consuming, tedious job.
Do some searching here for previous threads that cover this in detail.
Doubt the insurance will cover it unless it was caused by an incident.
Good luck

[mitiempo]

Don
What you want to do is first pull the mast. Then cut top deck layer of glass away in way of the wet/softness. Remove wet/rotted core back as far as good core. Build up solid glass and epoxy (1708 biaxial is good and strong and builds up layers faster than just cloth) where the mast sits and a bit beyond. Recore the rest with core material of choice (end grain balsa, corecell foam or similar. Glass over the top to deck level with a good taper at the edges. Fair and prep for paint.
Brian

[Chiquita]

Thank you both for the feed back. This whole thing is not going to be fun. I kinda feel this is out of my realm. Is there an rough estimate on how much something like this would cost ? Are we talking thousands ?

[mitiempo]

To do yourself probably 300-400 or so in materials. To have done professionally?
Not sure how many but certainly into the multiple thousands.
Brian

[sailingfool]

See your local banker, then see your local boat yard.

You have a reasonably expensive boat...any significant repairs to your deck, as this problem may call for, will be very obvious if not done in a professional manner and thoroughly. If you have a significant area of the deck redone, you are likely faced with refinishing the entire deck if you don't want the patch to be obvious. The patched deck could reduce the value of your boat as much as 50%, the refinishing of the deck may cost in the area of $10K (ignoring the cost of the core repair itself), so that becomes the better of two bad choices. Good luck.

[Chiquita]

Well, this is sounding like more and more fun. Honestly we plan to keep the boat for many years so as far as selling it and dropping the market value we are not so concerned with. I just want it to be safe for my family. I would like to do some offshore sailing in the near future and safety is my primary concern. I guess I need to drop the head liner first to see how bad it is. The thumb "push" test is showing approx 2 feet all the way around the mast.
This is the first "big" repair I am going to tackle. I have owned a 20 foot daysailer and a 14 foot Cat in the past. This is a whole new ball game !
I just would like to thank you all for your input and help.
Have a great day. Don N4MDX
S/V Chiquita

[mitiempo]

The best and some will say only way to repair this properly is from above. Not only is it harder to do this from below but you have lousy odds of a good job when you're done. Dropping the headliner won't help with this much. A moisture meter might help on deck but as long as you know the deck is compromised I would proceed by drilling test holes in the top skin and core only radiating out from the mast step to find out how far it has travelled. Inspect what comes out with the drill bit and you'll know when you reach dry core. This will give you the size of the problem. When finished you can cut the top skin away in way of the wet core plus a bit and recore from there, laying a new top skin after the core material is in place. Solid glass under the mast step and under any other hardware in this area.
Brian