Anchor Pulpit rebuilds/core trouble foreward (and fixes)

[BEC53]

I'm still skeptical of an original install with screws through the deck. Maybe it had a windlass from the factory, but someone else worked on it later, installed the plywood in between, and replaced parts of the windlass with another brand.

I'm almost certain mine has not been off before and it is, as I said before, hollow between the deck and the top of the pulpit. There are no signs of any removal of blocking in there--no holes, caulk, glue, etc.--just original painted deck. It does look like a solid piece from the back of the coping rail forward though. This is vintage 1985, stored in a covered boathouse since new, but, like you, I can't be 100% sure of what has or has not been done either.

Anyway...good luck on your project. It sounds like you'll never have to touch it again.

[mike]

www.smithandcompany.org/ best epoxy around for fixing your type of problem. have used it for 25 years, it will displace the water in the core material.
mike

[Genesis]

That's exactly what I am going to use; I'm already aware of it.

I've done some repairs with regular West System epoxy, both "neat" and thinned with acetone, and neither penetrated all that well.

This stuff does.

[Genesis]

The pulpit itself is hollow in the front. It is two-piece, and intended to never come apart - it is glassed together, but definitely two pieces forward of the coping rail.

Behind it its hollow underneath, and was clearly not originally designed as filled. Its also clear that someone jacked with it, as the epoxy that was used was wicked in - not built up and cleanly done. It is not well-bonded to the pulpit, for example, and if a yard had pulled it and repaired this they would have roughed up the inside of the pulpit and insured a good bond - they did not. Its pretty clear that the epoxy stuff was done by someone - probably a previous owner - to try to stop brown sludge from "leaking" out from under the pulpit. The sludge, of course, was the plywood rotting away...

I guess its possible that the factory didn't put the pulpit on, but those screws into the deck are awfully suspicious, and they're phosphor-bronze too - not stainless - which is another Hattie factory thing. Never mind that the exact same pulpit is present on a half-dozen other Hatts of the same general era (spanning many years) that I've seen around here. There are two Hatts spanning more than 10 years in my marina with the SAME pulpit! What are the odds of a bunch of random yards getting the exact same piece, and fitting it the exact same way? I'm not sure I buy that one...

Anyway, whoever did it originally, its gonna get fixed right this time.... It just annoys me to no end that this sort of stupidity is present on a boat like this - no matter who the responsible party was.....

Ah well, in the grand scheme of things its not a major issue - just a serious hassle.

[ttom02]

Another idea for heavy weather anchoring with an all chain rode that I use, is to buy two nylon lifting slings - mine are 15' long each. The type that are used to lift heavy items with a crane etc. Join the two together with the chain hook, fasten to anchor chain and connect each end over your spring cleats on the bow. Then just let out on your chain rode until it has slack in it. Now all of the load is spread into two points, and you tend to sail much less. This drops your scope down below the bow considerably also. The nylon slings have just enought stretch to work well.
Tom

[Bob Bradley]

Karl,
I have trouble believing that Hatt would have simply screwed non-marine plywood into the deck. It's just not their style of work. I'd be more likely to suspect that the same guy who did the sloppy epoxy job may have had a hand in it. Remember that anyone can buy a kit full of original screws, and someone doing a job that slopily would probably just use what he had at hand, rather than go out and buy some ss wood screws.

Also, whoever installed my windlass didn't use any caulk either. The main "Ideal" embossed plate was set in place completely dry. Neither was there any caulk on the windlass mounting bolts. Dry as a bone. Neither was there any caulk between the underside of the deck and the round thick plywood pad that separates the windlass from the underdeck. It popped off clean as a whistle. This is precisely why I have a ball of rust for a windlass right now.

With respect to the hollows in the pulpit, I don't think that they present much of a structural problem. The lion's share of the stress is absorbed by the heavy roller mount, which is bolted thru the solid portion, and back plated well.

I do have one concern with your approach of just replacing the deck core material and reinstalling the pulpit and roller mount. I would be somewhat worried about the structual integrity of the deck at the point where your new material meets the old material.

I will be doing a similar repair, and I plan to add a substantial backing plate to the underdeck, inside the rode locker, extending beyond the point where my new materal meets Hatteras' original material. This will probably be either a piece of white oak, soaked in cpes or a large piece of aluminum stock the same thickness as the existing backing plates.

In any event, I'm attacking my pulpit this Sunday, so I'll let you know if I find a stack of crappy plywood screwed beneath mine.

[Genesis]

... with the deck repair process.

I'm going to cut off the top skin layer and remove the sodden core to the limit of my ability with wood chisels. I'll get all the wasted stuff out of there, however far back that goes.

THEN I will soak the open edges with CPES until it will not take any more, and follow THAT with epoxy resin until THAT will not absorb further.

I'm then going to fit new core (this time being marine plywood), bedding it against the old core material using microballoon-thickened epoxy, to insure there are no voids between the two. The new core will likewise be soaked in CPES and then epoxy, again, until saturated.

The top deck piece will then be reattached, again, all epoxy, V-grooved, and glassed into the existing deck with a couple layers of fiberglass.

The other option would be to laminate up solid fiberglass to fill the deck gap, which is roughly 3/4". That would make that section of deck tank-like, but approacing it that way would be radical overkill. It does, however, have a certain appeal, as a friend of mine has a roll of the very coarse roving very similar to what Hatt used for their hulls originally..... all I'd have to do is buy the mat for the intervening layers, and of course all the epoxy...

Once that's complete the deck where the repair has been made will be massively stronger than it was originally - by several orders of magnitude. That area will also be heavier, but that's ok - the entire area involved is about 2' on a side, which isn't all that much.

The bottom of the pulpit will have new shoring installed, again, CPES-soaked and then resin-infused. Once installed and the pulpit has been cleaned up and refinished I will dry-fit the pulpit to the boat, filling any gaps with paste-consistency epoxy so that the stress is taken up evenly by the entire deck are on which it rests. It'll then be pulled off and the paste allowed to cure up.

I will then fair in a backing system under the deck using the same methodology - infuse it with CPES, then soak it in resin to insure that it cannot get water in it, dry-fit it with a layer of putty-consistency epoxy to insure that there are no gaps and the load is taken evenly across the entire contact surface, and then put it all back together.

The original design for the stress is to take most of the load at the caprail (with the pulpit sitting on it) and roller mounting bolts, with the rest taken on the windless bolts. Its a three-point load-distribution system as originally designed. The original backing plates are aluminum and for the roller bolts not very large - IMHO, not adequate. I intend to do better in that regard.

I'm convinced the wood I dug out is original going back to the delivery of the boat, but whether Hatt or the dealer did it is obviously impossible to determine. In addition there is the obvious addition of the windless by someone other than whoever installed the roller and pulpit.

However, the basic design is definitely bogus and the root cause of the problem.

An interesting note is that upon digging out all the rotted wood I found an active termite colony (!) in the pulpit plywood. There is no evidence of it extending into the boat itself, but the wood was being consumed from the top down inside the pulpit by the little buggers. So in addition to being rotted, it was being eaten! Also of interest is that the original build on the pulpit included two thin shoring members of plywood laminate on the inside of each side rail, those WERE infused with epoxy, and while the infusion was not complete they're not in bad shape for the most part. The center section of plywood which had zero resin applied to it, other than being epoxied to the underside of the fiberglass pulpit was destroyed and I have now cleaned off the inside of the pulpit down to bare fiberglass.

Also of interest is that whoever originally fit the pulpit did the dry fit part using filled epoxy (e.g. microballoons, etc) and that remains stable and rock hard. If the previous owner had not run epoxy up inside there in an attempt to stem the leaks, it would have come off easily without deck damage. As he did, it was "fun" to get apart. However, without that fairing compound it would have likely been nearly impossible to get the pulpit off at all as there would have been nothing solid against which to pry while extricating it.

[jim rosenthal]

...was perfect. For example, the bronze screws that held my bow rail stanchions down, screwed into that steel plate which is laminated into the toe rail, which all electrolyzed below the level of the deck and had to be drilled out. Now SS screws, which we withdrew a few years ago and replaced. They were holding up well, however. But not a good idea to start with.
Over the years I've seen a number of "inaccessibles" and "not put together rights" and "not water-sealeds" on Hatteras yachts, as well as the famous blistering. I think Hatteras yachts are build much better than average, but no company is immune to screwups, and no one is immune to the phenomenon that as the distance between the designer and the assembly line increases, frequently the number of "get it out the door"s increases as well.
After twelve years there are still parts of Blue Note I can't get to underneath the cabin sole. God only knows what's down there- I sure don't. And hope I don't have to find out anytime soon.
Karl at least you found this out now rather than by having the whole assembly rip out of the deck at the worst moment. Incidentally, when you're done repowering your boat and everything's to your liking, I'm buying it from you.:lol

[Genesis]

Yeah, I hear 'ya on the 'worst possible time.'

I shudder at the thought of what could have happened. If we had taken Hurricane Ivan on the hook, and any load had been taken up on that roller, its very likely that we would have ripped the entire front of the deck off. Seeing as one of the ideas I had for that storm was to do a bahamian moor (I've got the big storm anchors for it), I suspect we would have gotten really badly hosed.

Likewise, we've had to drop a hook when a storm has overtaken us before, and wait it out below. Hasn't happened often, but it would have only taken one really good 'whack' to rip the deck apart... That would have been one hell of a mess.

Anyway, it'll be tank-like when I'm done. I'm actually fairly seriously considering doing the full laminate deal rather than replacing the core. It would take some time, since you can really only lay two layers of glass at a time without running into the risk of a cooked cure, but on the other hand it would be damn unique and water would never get in there again.

I'm also considering repainting the foredeck when this is all done just for cosmetics. I dunno.... that's not all that big of a project, really, if I don't do the two-part stuff.

I dunno.... I'll get the top layer of the laminate off, dig it out, and then make my decision from there. I'm leaning towards using plywood for the replacement core simply because infused with resin its concrete-like in strength, I've done it before, and I've got some examples that have been left out in the weather for 5+ years that look like they were put together yesterday morning.

[Bob Bradley]

I think I understand most of it now. As I see it, you are not removing any material were the roller base is mounted (at least I hope not). So, you are removing only the area immediately around the hawse holes.

I’m still not certain whether you are removing material directly under the windlass, but I suspect that you are, and that is the cause of my concern.

My concern is that you are creating a seamed “plug” of surface fiberglass decking that is only tabbed into place by the new glass you are adding at the “V”. If the seam where you reattach the deck piece after you repair the core indeed proves to be a weak point, then it would appear to me that the main structure for mounting point of the windlass would be the substantially thinner underdeck fiberglass along with the backing plates.

I guess I envision a weakened area at the outline of the deck piece you are removing in order to repair the core. That deck top will be about 5/16” thick, and that provides much of the strength. The underdeck glass layer is substantially thinner – 1/8” or less – basically one layer of heavy cloth. I’d hate to see the outline of the repair crack under stress.

Unfortunately, you may also find that the decay has traveled further than you think, as I sadly discovered while rebedding my rodholders last spring. If you want, I can send you photos of the gunwale replacement job I did as a result of that problem. They might give you an idea of the kind of mess that may be in there.

In any event, if you have the time, take some photos of the project, as they will be a great education to the rest of us.
Bob