Sorry for the long delay but here is an update on the portlights. We actually put the portlights in in late October. At least that was the photo folder on the phone.
For sealant we used Loctite Marine for the sealant and it worked really well. I used 2 tubes of caulk to do the 4 portlights. I also had to cut about 1/8" of the plastic off the inside frames so they would seal tight. I made a jig for my table saw and cut them down. I don't have any pictures of this unfortunately. Worst part of that was the initial cut, because if I did them wrong I would have wasted a bunch of money, or had to do some creative woodworking to make it work.
In a previous post I said I was going to try to put a spacer in between the fiberglass inner and outer liners because I had seen it done somewhere on here. No dice, there's not enough room to get 1/4" plywood in there and work.
So we cut away all the old sealant with the vibratory tool - If you don't have one of these, get it! It's one of the best tools out there. The blade is called a sealant tool and is smooth, but it cut right through the old sealant both on the outside and inside. After we pulled the windows out, it made taking the leftovers off super easy. Once we did that, we cleaned all the fiberglass with alcohol, acetone, and goo-gone as needed. Then we put blue painters tape around the windows after test fitting.
After we had this all situated, it was time to cut the tubes and figure out how much stuff to use. I ended up with a 1/4-3/8" hole in the top of the tube and put a nice bead around the window frame. With my wife on the inside to help guide, we pushed the window in nice and tight, checked to make sure there was good sealant on the inside and then put the frame in nice and snug.
For the first window, we tried to put bags of pea gravel on to keep them tight, but the angle and deck didn't allow pressure in the right spots. So rinse and repeat on the sealant, guide it in, put the frame on. One thing I did realize was I used a bunch more on the last one, than the first.
After we got done, we tightened each of the screws (felt like 1000 of them) nice and snug, pulled the tarp over the area to dry and keep the red Texas clay that was in the air off of it and came back the next day.
We cut the excess off around the window, pulled the tape off, wiped down with alcohol and tightened the screws as needed, which were only a few and called it a day.
What did we forget??? We didn't take the masking tape off of the glass when we got them in January. After sitting on the windows for almost a year and being in our hot garage during the summer - it was 107 outside - the tape didn't want to come off. I got the inside off with a plastic scraper, goo-b-gone, alcohol and a bunch of elbow grease. Working bent over killed my back on the front two windows but I got it done. I still have the outside ones to do once it warms up again.
The results – No leakage in the boat. I went down to the boat last week and it smelled like a closed up boat, everything was dry and the bilge was dusty. So it was successful.
