Inner forestay deck joint leaks.

[aquaplane]

Looking at mum's 1982 Espace 1000, there has been a persistent problem with leaks through the deck where the inner forestay attachment goes through the deck.

Captain Tolleys has not been an effective cure, presumably because there is movement and flexing as things work when sailing, not that there has been much sailing recently.

I know of at least one Espace with a similar problem, the boat was local to Seminole.

The bulkhead which the interior part of the tang attaches to has rotted due to water ingress. The deck head was starting to deform as the inner forestay tried to pull the tang through the deck.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

How did you cure the leak?

How did you spread the forestay loads?

Dissasembling the boat to remove and replace the bulkhead is beyond my DiY skills and wallet.

[aquaplane]

I had a better investigate over the B/H weekend.

After removing the babystay I removed the 4 bolts holding the steelwork to the bulkhead.

There is no wood left in the top couple of inches behind the fitting. There is soft rotten ply within 50mm of where the fitting comes through the deck extending downwards about 100mm. There is solid wood beyond the soft bits.

I have made a butyl rubber gasket round the outside of the fitting and held that down with a 50mm x 20mm plate. The plate seems to have squashed the butyl rubber into all the cracks as it is oozing out nicely.

I have made a template out of a bit of card to transfer the load from the 4 original bolts to some more bolts and into the deck over 300mm instead of the current 50mm.

I'll try to post pictures of before and after views.

[rene460]

Hi aquaplane,

I would suggest that in addition to your sealing the deck you will need to repair the bulkhead in addition to spreading the deck load.  Your bigger plate will certainly reduce the local flexing that almost certainly contributed to the leak, but the flat form of the deck is just not stiff enough for the baby stay load.  It is the bulkhead which provides the necessary stiffness.

It should not be necessary to remove the bulkhead as suitable epoxies can be injected through bolt holes in the same way it is done for attaching deck fittings.  I have seen Everdure used to density and harden rotten wood, and this would be a good start.  Then I think you may need to replace the lost wood, probably with epoxy, or filled epoxy, not polyester.  You have to be careful of heat build up as the epoxy cures in a confined place, so I would suggest you contact the technical support of the manufacturer of the epoxy you will use for the repair before you start.

Rene460

[aquaplane]

Thanks for that Rene, I took your advice and chopped out the soft ply.
I was wanting to avoid too much hacking as I didn't want to spoil the veneer but then realised that the spreader plates which I made would cover up any replacement wood.
I got 4 x 5mm longer M8 bolts to go through where the existing holes were and some bolts the same as the originals to go through all the new holes.
All the cutting drilling and epoxying took a good morning.
After an afternoon waiting for the epoxy to go off I drilled the holes in the new ply and fitted all the metalwork and bolted it together early evening.
Three days later I fitted the babystay and put some tension on it. I think it needs more tension as the lee lower went slack when beating 2 days after that.

Pictures of before and after:

 



 

 




Also on Photobucket: s340.photobucket.com/user/aquaplanebob/library/Seminole/Seminole%20babystay%20mount?sort=2&page=1

[rene460]

Hi aquaplane,

Looks like a job well done.

A little rig tensioning is just normal tuning from here.

Rene460