If phase one was evaluation I have now started phase two, ripping out the old reinforcement in preparation for the redesign/repair.
Last night I started grinding away at the old fiberglass. The first thing I did was to cut into the fractured flange. I then ground away at the glass on the transom that used to hold the rebar. Being careful not to cut into the deck or transom I will spend additional time today, and probably tomorrow, grinding away. Because of the limited access it's hard to get at some of the areas. I have a 4 1/2" grinder with a fairly small footprint so I don't see anything preventing me from doing what I have to do but it will definitely be a long awkward process.
To get access I removed the engine instrument panel which gives me a fairly good size opening to work with. The tiller was also removed so I can more easily lay down in the cockpit, improving my access somewhat. I'm glad that my boat has the instrument panel on the stern and not on the side like a lot of CD28's I have seen, otherwise I would have cut a hole and fitted an access cover as was suggested in a previous posting.
Right now my biggest problem is lighting, too much. Because of the white boat and the hot Florida sun there is a large contrast between the outside, where my eyes are, and the inside, where the grinding is taking place. Add to that, I am wearing goggles and a respirator. I think that if I flip the boat 180 degrees it may help a little. I may also see if I can manufacture some artificial shade. This is one job that might be easier indoors or at night under artificial light.
It's somewhat rewarding to actually be doing something rather than just talking about it. And of course by cutting away what was there I have definitely committed myself to making this really happen.
The best news so far is that as soon as I cut away the fractured flange the deck started to sit down where it was supposed to be. It has somewhat of a set to it but I was able to push it down with just my hands so I don't think the deck is going to be a problem from here on out. There were two things holding it up, first the fractured flange was pushing up on it and second the debris from the backing plate. Iron when it corrodes starts to flake (help me out here: I think the term is exfoliate), significantly expanding, taking up lots of extra space that just was not there, the only place to go was up. As soon as all that debris was removed the deck sat down, mostly on its own.
In a production environment I'm sure the grinding process would no take no more than a day. In order to make my life tolerable I am going to spread it out.
Now the $64,000 question, which solution will I be using? I have decided to go with the box structure. Until I saw this as a possibility I was heavily favoring an external chainplate but I think the box is a nice solution. I am a fan of old wooden boats and have a preference for traditional fixes so the external chainplate has a lot of appeal to me. However, there is one over riding factor that made me decide to go with the box over the chainplate and that is that the chainplate changes the appearance of the boat. I know a lot of people will say that doesn't matter but one thing I know from buying and selling airplanes, and I'm sure it applies to boats as well, if you do something non-standard you will have to continuously defend your decision to prospective buyers and they are not always very understanding, even if the change is a better design than the original.
In a couple of days I will be going to phase three, the creation of the "Box". I've been obsessing over this for several days and realize there is a lot to making what appears to be a simple box. To keep this posting as simple as possible I'm going to break out a separate thread called "Making a (fiberglass) Box". Hopefully, this will separate a lot of the details from this post so it won't be cluttered with a lot of unrelated discussion. Also, the other posting will represent a thread where people can go for fiberglassing technique without dealing specifically with this backstay issue.
When the box is finished I will resurrect this thread and start bonding the box into place. So now let's go build a box :^)
Backstay lifting deck at hull joint
Moderator: Jim Walsh