Hull to deck joint separation

[CalEnron]

Hi everyone,
I have a 1970 Cal 29, and was wondering what the proper repair of a hull to deck joint would be. The boat smacked a piling amidships in a particularly nasty Nor easter we had up here. the separation is about 9 inches long with cracked gel coat running another foot and a half. I have worked with fiberglass in the past, so I'm not a complete beginner. I have not worked with gel coat however. Let me know what you think! thanks

[KeelHaulin]

Can you post some pictures? Would help greatly with a procedure for how to fix; but I am no expert on hull/deck joint repair. You can use photobucket.com to post pictures and link to this forum; but you need 10 posts here first to post hyperlinks or photos (just go over to the song chain thread in the 'off topic' forum; or post smiles here).

[tommays]

Speak of the devil #163



The right side of my boat was wacked at some point in time and was one of the joys i discovered when doing other repiars

I would say the good news is everything is pretty easy to get to inside the boat except right at the bulkheads and the rub rail comes off easy compared to may other boats

[Jeff_H]

This is the good and the bad news of out turned flange hull to deck joints. The good news is that they are easy and cheap to build, but very easily damaged. The other piece of good news is that they are not that hard to repair.

The key aspects of making a sound repair is to carefully assess how far the damage occurs in the fiberglass (it can often extend several feet beyond the visible repair due to horizontal sheering of the laminate) and to thoroughly clean out the joint in the area to be rebonded.

It will be important to cut away any delaminated glass and rebuild that area, ideally with an epoxy/fiberglass lay-up given the seconday bonds.

In terms of joint bonding materials, many manufacturers used an adhesive-caulk such as 3M 5200, but not all manufacturers. If the boat is adhered with 5200 I would use 5200 to adhere the joint. But some manufacturers used a polyester resin based slurry, which is not very ductile and which can be easily fractured and which is more difficult to repair once damaged. If the boat has been assembled with a polyester slurry, then I would suggest using epoxy when you reassemble the joint.

Some mfr's used either epoxy (rare) or higher tech adhesives developed in the aeronuatical industry, which can be nearly imposible to repair and which destroys the adjacent laminate when the joint fails. I'm not sure how to advise you if the joint was aeronautical adhesive.

Good luck,
Jeff