On our sail down to Muskegon from Bowers Harbor, we noticed flexing under the helm when steering hard. We knew moisture was high from the survey, but we didn’t think of the practical concern and thought it would be a ‘someday’ project. After that sail down, we knew it was a critical project for the safety of the boat, so it was the first place we decided to tackle.
The area that was wet & rotten was the entire helm area, to just forward the steering pedestal (which we had to remove. The 4 bolt heads aft of the pedestal hold the steering brackets on our Ericson. All the steering hardware had to be removed prior to recoring the deck here.
Chiseling out the rotten and wet core. Our cockpit has end-grain balsa core which does a nice job of isolating water intrusion to close to the hardware. We were able to get all the bad stuff out with a chisel, hammer, crow bar, and anything else that can do some damage. We also found a straight bit on a router set to the right depth can help make this process quicker when you hit the high moisture but still bonded areas.
After the core is removed prep the area: Sand, remove any old fibers or wood, and wipe with acetone.
The final product before the new core. We ended up extending it forward more than our original tapping.
We cut the core to shape, ground down the edges with an angle grinder, and used West Systems 403 filler to epoxy the core down to the bottom layer. We tried to grind a groove into outer edge to make sure when we were done with the project, the water still drained well to the corners.
After the core was bonded and ground out, we glassed it in with 1708 Biaxial fiberglass, which is basically a three-in-one fiberglass material for additional strength.
After the first fairing with West System 410 Fairing filler, we had to add an additional layer of fiberglass mat to build up the area to make it level. After each layer of fairing, we sand smooth and find low spots and imperfections. Expect 2-3 fairing layers to get the finish you want.
After the third layer of fairing, we sanded heavily. While it doesn’t look smooth visually, your hand is a much better gauge.
Once happy with the fairing, we reinstalled the steering pedestal to get the boat ready to go in the water.
We primed the repaired area with Total Boat Topside Primer, then finished with Total Boat Wet Edge Topside Paint. We used a foam roller with moderate success (it disintegrated pretty quickly)
To be continued… we are getting Seadek in our cockpit! This is a picture of the templates we made and sent back to Seadek to be scanned. The process overall was very smooth, which we’ll show in a future post!
Hope you learned something, let us know if you’ve ever done core work on your boat. If so, how did you do it differently, and have any advice for us in the future? Let us know in the comments below!
