Ideas Needed for Re-sealing Pulpit and Fore Deck

[bobk]

Thanks everyone. Some good ideas. Regarding the extent of core rot, did anyone try to estimate how bad it was with a moisture meter? In my case it seems pretty localized based on where I find moisture. My pulpit has had a cover on it through much or it's life, so maybe that helps.

I'm trying to avoid removing the pulpit itself because of the work and mess that Walt told me he ran into doing his. His was attached with blind screws from underneath as well as the large bolts and removing it destroyed large areas of the deck. Did anyone else encounter this?

It's a pity that Hatteras didn't go the extra 'mile' to prevent the problem. Never had it on my Taiwan trawler.

Bobk

[Vincentc]

Bob,
How do you use a moisture meter to check wood coring under a thick layer of fiberglass?

I assumed you could not, and I have never tried it. It would take some verification before I would trust a moisture meter.

Regarding pulpit removal, I did it and it was a difficult job which is probably not necessary. I had a fair amount of rot in the plywood pad under the pulpit, but in hindsignt I could have oversized the plywood around the penetrations, filled the voids with filled epoxy and then redrilled the penetrations. Not a perfect fix but one which will last my lifetime and probably the boat's.

Epoxy can be thickened from like honey to like penut butter. Unless you get it really thick, it will flow more than you oftentimes prefer. You can buy 50cc plastic syringes to inject it, but for the most port you can simply pour it.


Regards,

[bobk]

Bob,
How do you use a moisture meter to check wood coring under a thick layer of fiberglass?

I assumed you could not, and I have never tried it. It would take some verification before I would trust a moisture meter.


Regards,

A moisture meter designed for fiberglass (as opposed to one for wood or drywall) does this nicely. Before I bought the Chateau de Mer, I used it on several other 48MY's and found moisture in the core below the windows and on the fore decks as well as the aft hard tops. I also found water in the cored aft hull sides below windows in several Viking MY's that my son was interested in. They work very nicely. I recommend them to everyone for an annual check of the cored areas of boats. Most surveyors have them but seem reluctant to use them.

I haven't tried this, but assume you could verify what I'm describing by putting a meter on a piece of fiberglass, read it, then set the fiberglass on the surface of a water basin, or put a wet sponge behind it and read again. Maybe I'll do that if I can find a piece, but I assure you they work. The only interference seems to be the presence of metal. Again, you need a meter designed for the purpose. The Home Depot types read on a different principal and will not read core moisture of a composite.

Bobk

[Vincentc]

Bob,
I had only dealt with inexpensive meters with pointed probes designed to read moisture in wood and found it difficult to envision how they could read moisture under a layer of fiberglass. There must be other types and if you say they work, that is good enough for me. I do not understand how a TV works but technology does not stop me from watching it.

Regards,

[delta]

The underside of my pulpit extension was mostly hollow with the bottom black fiberglass attached to wooden 1x1 strips. If you remove the pulpit it's probably not necessary to remove the teak inlay.

[sgharford]

I pulled my pulpit up about a month ago. You are wise to take care of this problem now. I am replacing nearly all balsa core on front deck. I bought boat this way, but it didn't get any better in past 4 years of my stewardship. I tested for bad core with dead blow hammer, you can hear the change in pitch where core is bad. As for pulpit itself, it's really heavy - probably 180 -220 lbs. It's also allot bigger then you think when you have it off. Regarding attachment on mine (1976 43DC), there was a piece of 3/4 plywood that was screwed to deck. Then some bonding agent was added to top of plywood and the pulpit laid on top. The fiberglass sides of pulpit cover this plywood, so when you remove all the large bolts holding it down and wondering what the hek is still holding it, you are left thinking 5200. I pried the pulpit up (figuring it was 5200 - none present by the way), only to see the screws coming out from plywood. There is no way to remove these (wood) screws from top of pulpit - you have to 'hope' your deck is rotten enough that you can pry it up.

[SKYCHENEY]

You can be sure that not all of these were attached the same way. Some have been added over the years by various dealers/yards and although OEM, were not installed at the factory.

On our 53ED there is no plywood under the pulpit. As others have stated, YMMV.

[Genesis]

There was under mine, it appeared to be a factory job, and it was bad news getting it all apart and NOT fun.

[Vincentc]

Plywood here too, and same MO re blind screw attachment.



I went through several extra long sawzall blades getting in free. They apparently screwed the plywood down to the deck and then positioned the pulpit on top of the plywood. It was bedded in the same kind of filled polyester resin as you find under the cabin overhead. Looked like factory work to me.

The plywood showed no evidence of ever being sealed and the photo does not show the rot that I found with a knife blade.

Regards,

[Walter P]

My pulpit has the plywood (all rotted) and a bunch of sheet metal screws coming up from below. The strange thing is that the heads are not visible from below. It almost seems like they were installed BEFORE the bottom layer of glass cloth, which strikes me as impractical. As much as a PITA it was to remove however, it could have been worse had they used 5200. I must say however that as much as I love Hatteras yachts, they are not perfect by any means. The lack of thought with the assembly of the parts with no consideration of future water intrusion and subsequent rot is/was totally out of character for a company like Hatteras. They certainly should have had some better engineering for some of these items. Oh by the way, please don't tell me that all the others are worse, I expect they are, but they weren't Hatteras and their price tags reflected it.

My forward deck is now completely sealed and will be finished in the spring along with the re installation of the pulpit. It is a PITA job but one that can be done by most of you folks on this forum. I was convinced that it was a bigger job and decided to hire a "professsional" who originally would not quote me a firm number, but thought it would be around 10 thousand $. After milking the job for a few days I became concerned with his progress and asked again what he now thought it would end up costing me...reluctently he said about $20,000. I fired him on the spot and finished it myself with a friend over the following weekend. I'm sure there are lots of honest efficient folks in the marine repair business, but it sure is hard to find them... at least in the northeast. I'm starting to believe the old expression that "The boat repair business is the last vestiges of legalized piracy".

Walt