Has anyone else had problems with their cockpit pockets separating and leaking?
I've been slowly hammering out leaks, and tracked the most recent down to the cockpit pockets. It's hard to see the joint from the cockpit, so it wasn't obvious until I pulled the teak trim. Now I see that both have failing repairs from POs with differing taste in sealants, and one has a crack of almost 1/4" . The pockets slope down toward the centerline, so any rainwater coming into the pocket opening will eventually drip down into the coffin (port side) or the quarterberth (starboard side). A few minutes searching the web and the SBO archives didn't find me anything relevant, but I'd be surprised if I'm the only one who's seen this.
The pockets appear to be fabricated separately and glued onto the coaming. I've sanded away the old repair attempts, and my tentative plan is to add 2-3 layers of 9oz fiberglass tape from the underside and fill the crack with thickened epoxy. But I don't want to just cover up a root cause. The sheet winches are mounted to the coaming directly above the pockets (see the picture of the mounting bolts). So I wonder if the separation might be caused by the coamings flexing under sheet tension, which would presumably break my repair pretty quickly. Is there some place I ought to reinforce to prevent this from happening again?
I've been slowly hammering out leaks, and tracked the most recent down to the cockpit pockets. It's hard to see the joint from the cockpit, so it wasn't obvious until I pulled the teak trim. Now I see that both have failing repairs from POs with differing taste in sealants, and one has a crack of almost 1/4" . The pockets slope down toward the centerline, so any rainwater coming into the pocket opening will eventually drip down into the coffin (port side) or the quarterberth (starboard side). A few minutes searching the web and the SBO archives didn't find me anything relevant, but I'd be surprised if I'm the only one who's seen this.
The pockets appear to be fabricated separately and glued onto the coaming. I've sanded away the old repair attempts, and my tentative plan is to add 2-3 layers of 9oz fiberglass tape from the underside and fill the crack with thickened epoxy. But I don't want to just cover up a root cause. The sheet winches are mounted to the coaming directly above the pockets (see the picture of the mounting bolts). So I wonder if the separation might be caused by the coamings flexing under sheet tension, which would presumably break my repair pretty quickly. Is there some place I ought to reinforce to prevent this from happening again?