Anchor Pulpit rebuilds/core trouble foreward (and fixes)

[jim rosenthal]

Karl, I don't know where you are (West Coast FL?) but depending on how much marine plywood you need, you may be able to get it shipped in from Harbor Sales Co, who I think is in Baltimore, or Exotic Woods here in Annapolis. OR, you could call the Stuart area builders who use a lot of it (Rybo, Lydia, those guys) and ask if there's a supplier in your neck of the woods. If I can give you any help up here, let me know. I assume you mean the real stuff built up of hardwood veneers with waterproof adhesives...the kind they build cold-molded boats out of.

[Trojan]

All plywood company's uses the same water proof glue in all the plywood. Marine plywood just has no core voids and many more layers of wood. I'm not sure why you could not just glass in a standard piece of treated plywood. No rot. If you find a void you don't like just fill it with epoxy. Bolt load is 80/90 % HORIZONTAL shear. I would bore and sleeve the holes for a larger pull surface area. So the bolts can't elongate the holes. A 1/2 inch bolt I would use a 1 inch sleeve. Then bolt through with stainless bolts, large diameter backup washers or plates and lock nuts. How many boaters have had there windless ripped off the deck? Cleats yes. Sounds like a lot of over engineering and work. If it didn't rip off with all the dry rot in there. Do you really need the battleship fix. Just my thought.I like the k.i.s.s. system.Bill

[Genesis]

... it doesn't take any more work to fix it so it'll never fail again than it does to fix it like it was originally

Good part of the rot out. Need to trim back a bit more of the bottom skin (dremel time; saw won't fit in there anymore) and do some more digging, then its sander time (upside down - blech!) to get the surface flat for the replacement.

Gonna use a scuba tank and reg + mask while laminating and such so I don't gas myself..... I knew there was another good use for all that diving crap

[Traveler 45C]

It's a good thing the weather isn't that hot yet...

With all of that gear on you would be even more miserable.

[Genesis]

... the heavy cover isn't bad right now; I crank up the AC and make the boat nice and cool, and have a big industrial fan for ventilation, but the chain locker is a very tight, confined space.

Laying a piece of plywood across the divider/stem reinforcement gives me a good surface to sit/lay on, but its still damn tight in there. If it was summer I'd be roasting - as it is the temps aren't bad working in there.

Hope to have this all done within another couple of weeks; the underdeck repair is getting priority because the pulpit itself can be worked on in free air at the house; no drama or "overheat risk" there.

[Bob Bradley]

Mine doesn't have the chain/rope separator. It's just an open hole. I've been stuffing it with lifejackets to fill the void and also provide some cushioning. I'll put plastic and a cotton dropcloth over it when I'm glassing.

[Genesis]

... worry about YOU!

When you're glassing its gonna be messy..... I'm NOT looking forward to that part of this job.

[Bob Bradley]

That pulpit is one heavy mutha!

I was very pleased and surprised to see that mine isn't in terrible condition. The plywood underside body of the pulpit appears to be original, as it is a very professional looking fabrication, and "43C 110" is written on its underside in red magic marker. I'm not sure what the 110 refers to, but the boat is a 43C model. I can't see anyone just doing a repair job having any reason to write that there.

The two aft mounting bolts for the pulpit were badly corroded. I tried to "unscrew" them up out of the holes with a wrench and a pipe for leverage, but only managed to snap off the heads. Fortunately, we managed to drive them down thru the holes, and into the locker by applying a BFH and a fairly creative drift (the fluke post of a small danforth anchor).

Once the pulpit was off, we noted some decay evident around its port side hawse hole - about 5 to 6 inches in diameter, and virtually none around its stbd hole. The six bolt holes for the windlass, the four for the roller mount, and the two for the pulpit itself are all in good shape, with only minimal evidence of decay. A few good soakings with CPES should more than suffice for the bolt holes and stbd hawse hole. Of course, I'll also hit the entire underside face of the plywood with CPES as well.

I expect to cut out an area about 6" in diameter around the port hawse hole, and just repair that immediate area on the pulpit. My alternatives are to replace it with either a white oak or plywood Dutchman, or simply slide a waxpaper-wrapped piece of pvc pipe into the hole from underneath, and fill the entire area around it with thickened epoxy. I have a few pails of very fine mahogany and teak sawdust that I've added to expoxy, and used for applications like this in the past. It is quite strong, yet easily formable and sandable.

As far as the deck itself is concerned, I haven't examined it closely yet, as the batteries in my maglight chose yesterday afternoon to give up the ghost. I do not see any major flexing in the deck under and around the pulpit, and the bolt holes look OK. I intend to poke around them a bit with an awl to confirm the integrity of the core in that area. Hopefully, I will get away with a good CPES seal job here as well.

Observing the hawseholes from above, they certainly look a lot better than the gunwales around my rod holders did last spring. The rod holders had nothing but black goo around them, as far in as I could reach with a finger or screwdriver. There is at least material around the hawse holes. This gives me a couple repair options.

One option here is to set the blade on the saw so that only about 3/16” is exposed, and score the underside fiberglass from within the locker. I’ll cut out a couple of patches of fiberglass to let me inspect the shape that the core is in. Based on what I observe, I’ll either just soak it with CPES, replace small areas with Dutchmen, or cut out and replace the entire area like you are doing.

Another option is to cut out an inspection area from above, as the pulpit will hide any repairs to this area. I can then ream out any decayed core, and use a pipe wrapped in wax paper to hold the form of the hawse hole, and simply fill around it, like on the pulpit.

All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

When I first removed the windlass and took off the motor, I could only turn the shaft by using both hands. The gear oil looked like cold rusty molasses. No wonder the thing was so slow to retrieve the anchor. It’s a credit to Ideal that it even worked at all.

Over the weekend, I filled it with gasoline, and let it soak, turning the shaft occasionally. After soaking overnight, I stirred the gas with a paint stick, dumped it into a bucket, and refilled it. By last evening, the shaft was completely freed up. If I give it a spin by hand, it actually keeps on spinning from momentum now. There doesn’t appear to be any play in the unit either, so I don’t plan on disassembling it any further. As long as it’s off, I’m having a local shop go through the DC motor, and service it, replacing brushes and cleaning it up as necessary.

I’m also having a steel plate made to sister the existing rusted out mounting plate. I’ll have the whole thing sandblasted, and weld the new plate to the original plate. I’ll compensate for its thickness by reducing the thickness of the wooden spacer. With any luck, I’ll have the whole thing back together in a couple weeks.
Bob

[Maynard Rupp]

We bought a used Galley Maid winch assy. less motor to replace our "rope only" unit. Both of the gear boxes are identical except for the length of the shaft. I have the one we removed available. This unit comes from a fresh water only boat.

[Genesis]

Mine didn't look too bad and I considered doing the "CPES fill" thing. I'm glad I didn't, now that its all apart.

One problem you will run into inspecting from the bottom is that there may be (there were on mine) fairly large sections of core that were sound on the bottom, but were trashed on top. If you tear off a small piece of the bottom fiberglass and see good wood, that's not enough - you have to chisel it out to make sure there's no deterioration in the middle - its 3/4" thick.

Check it carefully - if you get away with filling it then you done did good and got lucky. It would suck to do this though and THEN have to take it apart later, because once you run that resin in there its going to be a BEAST to take apart at a later date.