H27 1978 cabin top

[kielboatsa]

I am getting ready to install some rope clutches and winches on my cabin top to runs lines aft to the cockpit. I wrote Hunter Marine and they indicated that there should be metal plates inbeded in the fiberglass at these locations. Has anyone with a 78 H27 found this to be true?

Thanks

 

[David in Sandusky]

No backing plates on our '77 h27

You need to drill/fill/drill holes through the cabin roof, and use fender washers and nuts in the cabin to attach the hardware. I then figured out how to put a varnished cherry plank over the hardware, with a 3 foot teak grab handle on it to help us get to the head, or stand in the kitchen while under way. I used selected hardware mounting bolts to hold the cherry plank in place.

The project is somewhere in the archives of this site, but was not yet connected to the h27 75-84 page. I found the article - here it is:

http://hunter.sailboatowners.com/in...ee&task=viewlink&link_id=7355&Itemid=99999999

Good luck - it's a great mod to a great boat!

 

[kielboatsa]

thanks, the pictures are a lot of help and it is also good to know not to expect to find an inbed plate!

 

[Ed Schenck]

From those pictures you can see that David is a perfectionist. Now I am too cheap and too lazy to cover the protruding bolts. I don't think my nice stainless nuts and fenderwashers are that unattractive. Besides, for the deck organizers, they are in a place on the headliner not convenient for covering. Just depends upon where your blocks, winches, and clutches get mounted I suppose.

 

[David in Sandusky]

Thanks, Ed, I guess...

The Admiral had been lobbying for better hand holds for "heading" aft underway, so I was just combining jobs.

Also, the headroom on an h27 is less than 6 feet, making me a little more sensitive to the hardware protruding from the overhead. I think you have a little more headroom on a h37c

 

[kielboatsa]

I like the handheld idea. I think I will get the cabin top hardware layed out and see what I've got and then possibly add some handhelds to cover at least some of the bolts and provide something to grab when needed.

 

[jcherubini]

Mounting hardware on cored deck

There are many stories, wives' tales, and unnecessary procedures about this and there's one perfectly good and easy answer.

Locate the hardware. Using a spade bitt, cut the holes into the TOP layer of glass about 1/8" oversize. Go below and tape up where the point of the spade bitt came through. Fill the hole with WEST epoxy. When it's cured, redrill the clearance holes through the epoxy slugs for the hardware and get ready to mount it.

The epoxy slug will serve as a compression block where the core was.

I prefer 1/4" G-10 (available at mcmaster.com) for backing plates. I also prefer to bed them to the underside of the deck. Some people leave them just held on with the lock nuts. I think they at some strength for both compression and sheer when permanently bonded.

The G-10 can be tapped but I would not do this with anything in tensile (upwards pull), only in sheer (side-to-side) loads.

I also maintain that ALL deck hardware should be bedded in 5200 (or, at the least, 4200 which will part with less effort). This is what 5200 is for and contrary to popular myth it DOES come off someday with a razor blade and some sweat but will bond 'permanently' for years (my toerail has held for 34 years). Any belief that silicone sealant either adds strength or keeps water out cannot be proven by my experience, which proves precisely the opposite.

The method I have described is included in several of the pretty good 'how-to' books I have seen... and it's all over my boat.

JC 2

 

[jcherubini]

Adding handholds to the overhead

I thought this was a great idea. I intended to add a second set of handrails, matching the ones on the deck, UNDER the deck and sharing the same holes and screws. The plan was to screw the handholds underneath up through the deck into the feet of the ones on top, using like big no.12 screws or something and then plugging the bottom holes... where water would not get in, ever. Get it?

Then my brother Adam the aerospace engineer reminded me that for something that's going to get a lot of working and wracking, like a handrail constantly being bent out of line by being used as a handrail, long fasteners are NOT the way to go. Eventually they will work loose and no amount of magical 5200 is going to keep water out of the core. So I abandoned this idea in favor of screwing them to the deck from the underside and then applying a long flat piece of mahogany (this boat has no teak left) to the headliner to trim off the edge of the foam headliner stuff and serve as a backing plate.

Then I tried fitting a 4"-wide flat strip to the complex curves of the underside of my little 'bubble-top' Hunter 25 cabin and realized I would never get it right. it gaps on one edge or the other and is insufficiently tight to actually hold the edge of the foam headliner stuff. So right now there's nothing on there except fender washers. Instead of an overhead handhold I am not laminating a vertical post at the corner of the galley and one opposite at the corner of the quarter berth. This is much more versatile and serves a number of other purposes (such as holding up the galley and VHF radio lockers).

But I still have to figure out how to trim off the edge of the foam headliner stuff.

JC 2