Cockpit Floor with Give

[Craig17021]

Last night I noticed that the floor in the cockpit of my 81 Hunter 27 has a lot of give. The wheel pedestal has about 3/4 inch of movement and doesn't give me confidence in its strength to provide support in a rolling sea. Has anybody experienced this? Any suggestions for repair or replacement?
thanks

 

[rardiH36]

Dear Craig:

Your experience has indeed happened before ... to me at least. Here's a link to a thread several years ago into which I threw out some info about my spongy sole experience and my repair method choice. Four years in the elements and at least 300 outings later, my pedestal is still firm on the sole, as is the actual floor. In the thread, my comments about "maybe I should've done it this way" still pertain. Especially, that the center of the floor repair under the pedestal should be a bit thicker than the edges so that rain and rough sea water run off into the scupper channels rather than puddle around the pedestal.

The Cherubini Hunters are great boats. Every other weekend I see a very nicely maintained/restored Cherubini H27 (or two) sailing around the SF Bay. They are just as wonderful to watch sail by as the bigger and more expensive "premium" brands.

http://forums.hunter.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?p=642721&highlight=plywood

regards, rardi

 

[Craig17021]

Thanks for all the good information.:dance:

 

[inquiztr]

I completed a full repair on this last year and took pictures along the way.
Not sure about forum rules about posting links to personal blogs so I'll post the links to the photos directly. If you look at my profile you will find the blog, but the steps I took are pretty much identical to the previous persons writeup.

My messy cockpit with all the tools:

Floor cut open:

The soggy plywood panels:

The new core is a closed cell foam (yellow), and the dark red is a solid FRP from McMaster carr for areas directly under the pedestal :

I glassed wood stringers under the floor to straighten out the saggy floor:

Core set in thickened epoxy and sand bags set on top to hold it down:

The floor is cured, and I added epoxy to fair out rough areas and low spots:

Stitch mat cut and set in place:

Fiberglass glassed down over top of the core. The old top layer of fiberglass I had originally peeled off was too curved to work with so I just layed up new glass instead of reusing it:

I painted the fiberglass with Interlux 2 part paint.

And finally : Re-assembled the pedestal:

 

[rardiH36]

Dear Inquiztr:

You certainly documented your repair much better than I did! And you went higher tech with your solution. Very nice. Your last photo "And Finally ..." really is great to look at. With the plastic wrap as the back drop, it's like something from a blood and guts TV/Movie show set such as "Dexter". Carefully choreographed chaos. Great colors. Thanks for posting it.

From your pictures, your H33 sole is very different than my H36. But your photos of the plywood was my experience as you mentioned. The actual wood looks to be still in fine shape; not rotted. Just that the glue between the plywood layers has failed and water is sloshing around in between. Hence my thoughts that instead of removing the entire top skin, an alternative might be (after thorough drying) to find a way to inject/flood the core with epoxy, maybe thinned a bit. Vibrate well to cause the epoxy to wisk into the plywood gaps. When the epoxy cures, my guess is the sole will be very rigid again. This solution may not be perfect, but we are talking about 30-35 year old boats many of which probably won't around say 10-15 years from now. (Nor will many of the 60+ year old current owners.) So the fix need not stand the test of a really long time. For that matter, Hunter's original professional design didn't stand the test of time either.

rardi

 

[inquiztr]

I think the main problem your going to find is getting the core properly dried out. even if you had drilled 300 holes along the top skin to let the wood dry out, I would think it would take a few years.

The water on the top edge of soaked blocks may dry out but the bottom side never will. And the epoxy will not cure or bond with the soggy wood so it only makes it even harder job afterwards of doing the repair properly.

The other issue is you still need to straighten up the floor first. Not shown in my photos, I actually had 2 jacks propping up the bottom of the cockpit floor to level it until I had the stringers in place to hold the shape. I am not sure my stringers would have held well being screwed into the soggy wood.

I had the plastic tarp over the boat as I was living on the boat at the time, and the boat was in the water. It was chilly outside still as it was the end of April but inside the plastic bubble it was very warm which I needed for the epoxy to kick properly. It also protected the project from rain as I wasn't sure how long the repair would have taken.