How To Repair Laminate On A Sail Boat Mast

OK so ane.5 years on I demand to revisit this.
Warning, this mail service is wordy, full of pics & semi educated guesses.

A couple of months ago I noticed some slap-up in the pigment in front of the mast footstep, so I did a little digging and its actually a crack in the laminate.
(This section is not actually the hull, merely part of the internal line)

Now I suspect this may have existed a while, given that if you wait to the right of the second picture, someone's done a shit job with finishing fabric, the thin stuff useless stuff that chandlery'south sell. But I suspect its caused by the human foot of the compression post sagging. Merely to brand information technology to the end of the flavour, I practical permanent market at each stop of the scissure & so far its stayed stable.

While I was in the excavation around mood I decided to start poking around for the source of some bilge water that didn't seem to coming from any obvious source.
On two of the floors glass fibre has split abroad at the bottom radius in the middle areas. Its actually sprung frontward over the superlative of the bankroll plate for the keel bolts.
There is too evidence of a repair on the fwd border of 1 as its not very true compared to the others. Water is leaking somewhere else on the boat (fresh h2o), getting behind the internal liner & coming out via these cracks.

Not a pleasant discovery, however no show of anything at the very FWD terminate of the keel or the very aft end so I doubt its grounding impairment.
Its nigh as if the keel nut backing plates are likewise close to the radius at the bottom of the floors & have cut through it.
Anyhow I chip the bullet & decided to do some more than excavation, by cutting out the side & bottom of the moulded in locker under the port settee to get access to the mast compression mail & too to see if the floors carried on under the lockers.

Not much of what I found was nice:

The cream in the side of of the settee was in skillful condition although not peculiarly well bonded to the GRP. The stuff in the bottom however had a lot of sitting moisture & water betwixt it & the hull & that lovely smell yous get from GRP & polyester foam that's had water sat in it for 30 years.

A load of this crap came out, can't tell if its wood shavings or resin starved matt, it stank & was sodden.

Yummy:

British boat building at its finest!
And so the solid hardwood core of the mast compression post is actually pretty soggy, its not 1 piece just 3 pieces, not even bonded together or at least not anymore. Its also not even fitting the hull very well at the edges, although this is perchance due to the compression in the centre springing upward the edges. I would take thought they would take glassed something this important in.
I imagine the condition of the centre of the wooden cake is worse as that's the everyman point of the bilge & whatsoever water will accumulate there.

Also, as far equally I tin can tell, the simply place that the keel floors are glassed to the hull is the relatively narrow surface area you can encounter in 1 of the above pics, the rest is completely relying on the bond between the self expanding polyester foam & the hull.

So in conclusion need to supersede the compression step, I tin can't encounter anyway to do this other than cut open the floor & re-glassing after. Not certain if there is a better fabric than a solid oak block thats been soaked in epoxy.
I likewise need to repair the splitting floors, which will involve at a minimum taking off the keel basics & backing plates & hopefully working around the studs without dropping the keel. I'chiliad thinking of using the hoist to take the weight of the hull off the keel. Adrift would probably be all-time for hull shape, but don't fancy unbolting the keel adrift!

I'grand about probable getting semi-professional person help with this one from a retired guy that ran a boat repair business fixing stuff similar this for 40 years, merely would nevertheless like to get any advice or suggestions on how y'all'd tackle something similar this. (or just commiserations!)

Source: https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F213451-mast-foot-repair-need-overkill-layup-schedule%2F

Posted by: chavezwhichisatur.blogspot.com

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