Hunter 26 Guardwire Stanchions

[firewater]

Does anybody have any experience of removing the guardwire stanchions that are screwed to the top of the cabin roof on the Hunter 26?

I've just trailered my 1997 Hunter Legend 26 home for the winter, and the door on the garage that I'm hoping to park it up in is just a bit too low to clear the top of the guardwire stanchions. The stanchions are attached to the cabin roof with 4 screws that I'm tempted to undo so the stanchions can be removed. Normally, I would just get the screwdriver out and get on with it, however the fact that the inside of the cabin is lined with a single large molding with no access to the back side of the stanchion mounts is giving me serious pause for thought. The last thing that I want to do is whip the first screw out and hear the plinking sound of a nut falling down behind the inner cabin roof molding.

Does anybody know what is on the back of those stanchion attachment points? Are they loose nuts, glassed on nuts, tapped out plates, or... ???

Any advice or experience with these stanchions would be gratefully received.

Many thanks and regards,

Firewater

 

[Rick Webb]

Should be Easy

Should. They are screwed into a piece of aluminium that is embedded into the fiberglass. That being said I'd be concerned about stripping the head of the screw or snapping the head off not enough not to do it but enough to find the better screw head for the drill than the one already on it from the last job and to be real careful. I might even go a buy a new one to be sure.

Another posibility and even though it would be a pain in the ass would be to lower the tounge all the way down to the floor maybe place it on a four wheel furniture dolly and squeek it in under the door that way. Then in the spring when you forget to pull it out that way and tear out the door you can put in a taller door and not have that issue next fall. Seriously though lowering the lounge may be worth looking at.

Good Luck

 

[BrianW]

On my 1994 H26, all of my stanchions and rails are bolted through tapped threaded aluminum plates embedded in the fiberglass. A few years ago, I had to replace some of them due to storm damage. I have to warn you, several of my bolts would not free up and I wrung at least one of them off when attempting to remove them. I also had to use an impact screwdriver. Since my replacement stanchion's base bolt holes did not align exactly with my old ones, it was no huge deal to me to get them out intact, but freeing ALL of your bolts intact will be critical for you. If one bolt snaps, you may have to re-tap all of the holes to reinstall that stanchion. When you do reinstall, I suggest you use nickel anti-seize on the bolt threads and properly re-bed the bases. BrianW

 

[BrianW]

Rick's suggestion is very sound. You may also gain a couple of inches by partially deflating your trailer tires. Removing the stanchions is no small deal. BrianW

 

[Rick Webb]

Another Thought

Remove the wheels. Then a couple of posibilities put dollies under the hubs or some one foot wide peices of plywood and roll it in on the hubs. Or maybe a pair of 8" wheels.

Simpler still just let the air out of the tires. I do that when I work on the truck

 

[BrianW]

I think Rick meant this above when he suggested lowering the trailer tongue, but you could use another jack to hold the tongue up, and completely retract and swivel the existing trailer jack out of the way. Then, use the other jack to lower the tongue further down onto a furniure dolly. Or still yet, get the tongue even lower with the furniture movers being "as seen on TV" ads that are less than an inch high. By now, you probably see that Rick and I are strongly steering you away from removing your stanchions. BrianW

 

[soling42]

Even with the stanchions removed, the reverse spreaders on the mast won't allow the mast to be lower than what the stanchions would have been. You'd have to remove the mast and stanchions which would then mean that the cockpit would be so close to the ceiling that it'd be nearly inaccessable.

I had a similar squeeze getting mine in a rather huge 12' shop door and it took a lot of tweaking to fit it in. It's a big boat up on the trailer for almost any shop/barn. I'd almost draw the line at needing to dismantle any major part of the boat, also removing the trailer wheels, and then expecting to get the whole trailer and boat to squeeze into place without a huge effort even under ideal conditions.

There are many good designs for northern sailors who tent/canvas their boats for winter storage. It might end up being FAR less effort using the mast as a ridge pole.
Good luck. Mike

 

[Steve Dion]

It is not a bad idea to remove the stanchions anyway. If you ever damage one or need to repair a leak the sooner you remove these bolts the easier it is. They just get worse with age.

When you rebed them be sure to use Tef-gel on the threads. It will make in the installation and next removal much easier. You may think about rebedding them with butyl from Maine Sail too.

All of the newer Hunters seem to have the plates embedded the fiberglass. So you should not need to worry about nuts falling off.

 

[Rick Webb]

How Much is "A Bit Too Low"?

I am really liking the changing out the trailer tires to 8" tires idea if it gives enough clearance. Are there brakes on both axles? That could be an issue with that idea. I am wondering if lowering the tounge will help much as the stantions you are asking about are not that far away from the axles and the pivot will not generate as much of a difference.

 

[Rule62va]

pardon me if this appears as a hijack

Is there a source for replacement stanchions on the H26. I understand there are two different stanchions, one forward and one mid-ship. The store onsite does not carry them.

Hunter Marine references these part numbers:
Hunter part #1009834….STANCHION,FWD,W/BAIL.

Hunter part #1009835….STANCHION,AFT CABIN TOP,W/BAIL.

thanks in advance

 

[Rick Webb]

Replacements

I'd bet you can get them from Hunter Marine in Alachua, FL

http://www.huntermarine.com/

They probably still have the specin the computer and can bend, weld and ship them right out

 

[BrianW]

I've bought the forward stanchion from Hunter. BrianW

 

[BrianW]

Firewater, let us know what course of action you ended up taking. BrianW

 

[firewater]

Many thanks for the extremely useful insights and suggestions regarding the stanchion fixings. My thinking is much like Steve Dion's - if these things can be removed without risking the loss of the fixings under the deck, then the sooner I get them removed, the easier they are going to be to remove. It would suit my purposes well to be able to remove them as and when necessary to facilitate storage.

With regard to the mechanics of actually getting it under cover, being British, I slightly understated the matter by saying the door is 'a bit too low' - it's actually about six inches too low. To similarly understate the rest of the access variables, the door is also a bit too narrow - about an inch narrower than the boat's beam, in fact, and the maneuvering room for getting the boat aligned with the opening to back it in, is just about the same as the combined length of the tow car and loaded trailer. So I have been giving the matter a bit of thought. The storage is a former agricultural building, with about 8000 square feet of floorspace, plenty of which is available to park the boat up and happily potter away during the winter months working on it. The internal roof space is higher than the doorway too, so once the boat is in it will be well accommodated. The idea of parking it up outdoors under a tarpaulin, for the sake of a few inches here and there just isn't going to sit with me.

So it's the width limitation that dictates the fix - which is to remove the doors and door frame from the building. Even so, I will still need to get the stanchions off to fit under the door lintel, and width clearance will still only be an inch or so either side. As for getting it turned and aligned with the opening to push it in - I'm still thinking about that. We've got old agricultural buildings, but we aren't farmers, so I don't have a tractor or other such handy maneuverable farm machinery to hand to make the job easier. Given the proximity of other buildings to the maneuvering area for this particular door, I'm going to need to get something with a short wheelbase and a decent bit of power, as the trailer will near enough need to be turned through 90 degrees within it's own length. I thought I would take the front pair of wheels off for that particular exercise.

Happily, I enjoy a challenge, and I'm kind of thinking that it might prove to be all the excuse I need to go and buy an old tractor and some new power tools... grin...

Many thanks and regards,

Firewater

 

[cephius (Dave)]

The boatyard I just left my H260 at for service uses a skid loader to "tow" trailers and boats in very tight quarters. If you have property with a barn you just might find many other uses for the skid loader that would justify the cost.

I've also seen at general aviation air fields small aircraft towed by hand with a small cart that is little more than two wheels and a handle. aircraft are much lighter that our boat and trailer rigs, so that solution would require a couple of large boys to assist.

Maybe one of the powered wheelbarrows would be the answer. They have to cost less than a skid loader and have more push than a hand cart.

 

[Rick Webb]

Going With the Aviation Theme

Many aircraft hangers have an additional door above the big door to accommodate the vertical stabilizer. A couple of small door to accommodate the stanchions might work if the door is not an overhead one. Alternatively, if the floor is earthen or macadam dig a trench for the wheels to ride in for the stanchions to clear.

 

[Futsal Fred]

A couple of years ago I tried this very thing with my 260. Took the mast off, removed the stanchions, got it all lived up at the door, let some air out of the tires, the whole deal.

Thought I had it measured pretty well, but I was still about 2 inches tall. Hell of a lot of work for nothing.

Ended up buying a huge heavy tarp, built a mast crutch for the bow so the mast would be parallel with the ground, pulled the tarp over it (20 ft. wide covers it down to around the water line) and bungied the bejeezus out of it.

Still able to do some work on it when the weather permits, maybe not as comfprtably as I'd like but well enough.

Used the space in the big garage for an old Allis Chalmers tractor. Can't let it go to waste.

 

[FourPoints]

removing the stanchions is not a huge deal, and in fact it's something that should be done from time to time to rebed them. I recently took off all of mine for the first time since buying the boat and rebed them all as they had started to leak. The whole job, including lots of cleanup from a improper repair job from the previous owner, took about 6-7 hours (cleanup was well over half that time)

I'm guessing your project wouldn't be much different from what I did...
http://sailingit.com/blog/boat-projects/rebedding-stanchions-with-butyl

 

[firewater]

Outcome...

Further to my earlier posts about the guardwire stanchions, I now have my boat safely tucked up indoors away from the filthy weather conditions that we are already beset with...

Removing the stanchions proved to be trivial. Only two of the sixteen screws required to be removed were reluctant, and they also yielded with the correct screw head attached to a socket wrench. As described in the responses to my initial questions, the screws evidently thread into secure plates and happily screwed back in to their respective holes after the stanchions were removed. I also had to remove the pulpit from the bow to get enough clearance under the door lintel; the pulpit also removed easily and without fuss. It does however have the wiring for the pulpit mounted nav light leading in to it, but there was sufficient slack in the wire for me to hang the pulpit over the bow without having to cut it.

The only mod we ended up making to our garage door was a bit of trimming of the metal door frame with an angle grinder to buy a bit of extra width. Enough to give us about an inch either side of the boat as we pulled it very slowly into the building.

Job done. Boat tucked up for the winter. Happy me.

Many thanks to everybody who helped out with invaluable insights and experience.

Firewater

 

[BrianW]

Great news! When you put everything back together, I suggest you replace any of the screws that have any visible rounding (buggering) of the head. Also, I suggest adding some nickel-based anti-seize to the screw threads and re-bed the screw heads and stanchion bases with a suitable compound. BrianW