Big Fish,
I loved my Hinter 27 and had the same problem. Search the posts on this site for Hunter 27 Mast Step Rebuild. It shows good pictures. I agree with the others here the cost of having this fixed by the yard would probably be well in excess of the value of the boat but if you have a little faith and are fearless you can do this....I did.
The deck is a sandwitch of a layer of fiberglass, a balsa wood core and a top layer of fiberglass. If water gets through the top layer of fiberglas it is absorbed by the balsa wood which causes it to rot and when it freezes to delaminate the deck. This makes it mushy and the weight of the mast will crush the deck. Water usually get in from the mast base bolt holes or the electric and antenna wires holes next to the mast. Hunters design on this was dumb and usually poorly ececuted and prone to leak. It can get so bad that the doors in the cabin won't close. The mast base is bolted through the deck for 3 or 4 bbolts that pass through the cabin with nuts inside. You'll have to reove these to get the base off and you may have to remove some trim pieces inside to get at them. With the mast down you can fix this by:
1) Cut off the top of the deck around the bump. see the pics on this web. Save the top because you reuse it.
2) Clean out the wet wood with a chisel grinder and any other tools that seem to work.
3) Cut marine plywood or other hard wood strips to fill the area. The should not fill it up 100% as you'll be using some resin and thickener from west marie to fill up the space.
4) Mask around the deck and the top piece you cut off. use 2 layers of tape.
5) Seal any holes in the area you cleaned out with tape from the inside or a drop of bondo body filler. It keeps the resin from dripping away...it always goes exactly where you don't want it.
6) Mix up a batch of resin and use a little thickening power kind of like very very thick maple syrup.
7)pour some into the cavity you cleaned out and place the wood in. It should ooze up around the wood. Now add a little more to fill the hole. On mine I made a small second batch make the consistency of peanut butter and butterd the deck peice I cut out .
8) Then place the deck piece I cut out on top and pressed it in level. I tongue depressors to scoop off the excess that oozed out of the crack. Lots of gloves papertowels and a waste basket to put the trash in. Made clean up easier. I put a brick on the top to kind of press everything together and let it cure.
9) when it was dry I removed the tape and sanded the crack nice and smooth. Then I outlined the area with tape and used some textured deck paint (Kiwigrip) to cover the area.
10) Redrill the holes for the mast base and make sure there was a good bit of calking to prevent leaks. If you drill them out a little bigger and the tape the bottom and fill with resin andredrill to the right size even if water leaks in it wond be absorbed by the wood. You can do the same thing if you replace the antenna and mast electric wires.
You can do this yourself. The fearleness come from cutting out the deck. Cutting the deck makes us all really nervious.
If the cabin liner inside the boat is depresed you might have to jack it back into place and then replace the compression post with a longer one or add a shim. You can remove the teak cover of the post which is along the port side to the rear most partition. You pop out the bungs outof the trim with a small screwdrive and unscrew the trim. The post undeath on mine was just a piece of pine like a 2"x2".
It won't be perfect but hey the H-27is a 30+year old boat that is basically bullet proof and fun to sail and easy on the wallet....and when you put a scratch in it as we all do from time to time you won't loose you mind.
Let us know how you make out.
Sailnboats require some work and that's part of the fun....
I fixed this on my boat so if you want to e-mail me I'm
Nelsonhow@netscape.net
