Cabin top water ingress

[hoppy]

One of the screws that hold the spray hood mounting rail has always been a problem and I had to fit a larger screw to make it secure. Unfortunately it had come loose again and I decided to fix it. There was also a brown stain on the deck that I assumed was from rust from the screw. When I removed the screw I saw no sign of rust and was a bit confused about the stain. I fill the hole with epoxy glue and left it overnight. The next day there was no sign of the epoxy covering the hole, so I cleaned it up and did it again


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When I checked a little later I could see a small hole on the edge of epoxy area and eventually a large bubble of brown water appeared


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I decided to remove the epoxy and started digging around with a tooth pick and brought up lots of brown muck


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I saw in the "Teak Decks: Glued or "Screwed" - water ingress??" this post which has me a bit concerned

Dec 30, 2012 4:29:17 GMT so49curious said:

Thanks for the responses guys,
Donrob - IMHO you should investigate to minimize damage. Polyurethane injection could possibly help if you do find water ingress/rot:
www.sailtraininginc.com/repairs/balsacore.htm
Ted - true, wet balsa is a nightmare. Check out this link for an eye-opener:
www.pcmarinesurveys.com/balsa%20core%20marine%20survey%20surveyor.htm
Zanshin - sorry about your text-loss frustration (I wonder how many snippits of genious have been loss due to a certain "operating system"). I contacted Jeanneau - or I tried to (no auto "acknowledge") on this link:
www.jeanneau.com/contact.html
If/when I get a reply, I will post it.
John

If I had the time I think I would look at cutting away some of the headliner below (as it is hidden behind a wooden panel) to see what I find.

I will get someone to look at this once I am home

[hoppy]

For now I have covered it with silkaflex but left a hole on the downward side so the any fluid can seep out without any coming in (I hope)


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[hoppy]

When I was onboard at Christmas I tackled this problem.

I cut away the ceiling liner as it was behind the wooden ceiling panel to get access to under the deck. Then I cut away the fibreglass layer to get to the core which was soaking wet.

The white spot is where added silkaflex to seal the original screw hole in the deck until I was ready to do the next step



Around the screw hole I filled with a fibreglass filler and gelcoat filler on the deck. Later I re-drilled and remounted the spray hood mount rail (with silkaflex of course)

For now I have left the hole open so it can dry out (I hope). I might wait until late in summer before I do any more to give it a good chance to dry out, or maybe I'll leave it as is as it in not structural (I guess)

[reverie]

Hoppy,

What year is your SO40?

I'm wondering if it was a 2003 or earlier year, before Jeanneau changed to their Prisma injection molding process.

John

[hoppy]

2002, pre-Prisma

[tedp]

Exposing the wet patch is the best thing you could have done. If it's a balsa or a ply core, it can be force dried with a hot air gun. It's similar to rot in a marine ply boat - I used to own one. The material will be as brittle as paper and needs to be bonded together.

Delaminated patches of ply can be fixed by drilling a hole pattern and injecting epoxy using a syringe without a needle on each hole. Doing so from the inside will make an unholy mess, but you'll glue everything together and it will be stronger than it used to be.