Deck / hull seperation

[Thad Keller]

Anyone else experience a problem with the upper deck separating from the hull behind the rubrail. I can visually see a sag in the rubrail line on the port side and can place my fingers under the rubrail. Got into some big water yesterday and damn near sunk the boat. bilge wouldn't keep up with the amount of water pouring in. Every wave we hit the water was pouring in like buckets, it was running down the steps to the cabin like a waterfall from behind the inner wall. Scary was an understatement as we had 9 souls onboard, 5 were children. Knew were safe after getting back closer to shore as the bilge pump and my wife were able to scoop and pump the water out, and not another drop came in but scary none the less. any fix or is the boat ruined? Had a marina mechanic tell me today its actually a common problem and quite fixable. Opinions?

 

[hottoddie]

OMG 9 people in a 24ft boat in rough conditions. I hope you called a securite' message to the Coast Guard and had everyone on board wearing a life jacket. Doesn't take a lot to sink a small boat heavily loaded in rough seas.

Have a qualified marine surveyor inspect the hull and if judged fixable do some homework and find someone qualified unless you are very competent.

 

[b_arrington]

Its possible to fix a hull deck joint that's opened, depending on the condition.

I found the joint was separating on my boat. Fixed it last season during spring commissioning. One area about 3 feet long was bad and getting daylight through. Others were just some loose screws. Sealant was minimal throughout.

I removed the entire rail to clean, seal, and rescrew the joint. Took a couple days. Do a search and you find my detailed post about it.

 

[Lazy Daze]

Glad you made it back safely.

To give you an idea of what you have, so you can better understand, the two main components of the boat (glass) are the deck (or top deck) and the hull (the part in the water). They are, basically, like a shoe box lid and box. The two parts attach in the exact same way as the lid/box. There is then structural adhesive applied in the joint along with numerous types of screws. Fixing - which is totally possible - all depends on the amount of damage that occurred during the separation. Once the ENTIRE (makes much more sense to remove the whole thing to fully check things out) rubrail (both pieces) is removed, the amount of repair can be figured out. Anything else, at this point, is just guessing.

 

[northern]

It is a lot of work to do it correctly. We had the sealant removed and replace along with all the screws took 60 man hours at $100 an hour that would have been $6,000. We provided 2/3 of the labour. Without the knowable person directing us we would not have known what to do. How much is your boat worth?