Stanchion repair - Réparation des chandeliers ("Snowman")

Dan, propriétaire anglais de « Snowman », naviguant sur le lac de Rutland au centre des terres anglaises, nous raconte dans le détail sa réparation de chandeliers...

Et c'est avec un énorme plaisir, que nous publions ce premier témoignage en anglais. Pour ceux dont cette langue donne quelques boutons, je vous propose une version hilarante à l'aide des traducteurs automatiques "uproarously funny" (=désopilants) comme dit Jeremy ... mais cela permet de comprendre au moins le sens général ... (il suffit de cliquer sur français dans le widget ci dessous)

" Three of the stanchions must have taken a knock at some point in the boats life. If you look at the base in Figure 1, you can see that there are three machine screws; two are bolted through the aluminium toe rail, but a third is bolted through the GRP deck, without any reinforcing beneath.

As can be seen, there was damage to the deck where the stanchion base was pushed downwards, pivoting on the two machine screws bolted through the toe rail. The gel coat and fibreglass were both damaged. Water was seeping inside the hull and had damaged the headlining. Also the stanchions were not secure and could easily be moved.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows the damage inside the hull; the machine screw was actually behind the block of wood (used to support the head lining) so I had to remove the block of wood. This block was only glassed in with one or two layers of fibre matting and came out easily.

Figure 2

To remove the stanchion completely I had to remove all three machine screws. This was the hardest part. I tried using a screw driver alone, but being flat-head screws this was always going to be difficult as it's very hard to get enough purchase on the screw-head. However, it was actually impossible to unscrew these machine screws. I had to drill into the gel coat beneath the toe rail to access the captive nuts at the base of the machine screws (Figure 3). I then used a socket wrench to remove the nuts. With the nuts removed I could pull the stanchion out complete with the base and machine screws.

Once the stanchion/base/screws were off the boat I could see that the screws were actually completely seized into the base; a chemical reaction between the stainless steel of the machine screws and the aluminium of the stanchion base had bonded the two components together. I had to hammer the screws out. Figure 4 shows the screws after extraction; you can see the threads have bonded with the aluminium. There was no way these screws could have been undone!

Figure 3

Figure 4

With the stanchion and base removed, I could see the extent of the damage to the deck. Figure 5 shows the holed deck and damaged fibreglass. I used a 4 inch grinder with a sanding "flap" disc from inside the boat to grind back the fibre in an area about 8 inches in diameter, around the hole. I didn't grind back the gel coat on the deck but used a Dremmel with a special drill bit to remove the gel coat around the cracks so that I could fill these with filler once the repair was complete.

Figure 5

With the fibreglass ground-back inside I then laid up several layers of chopped strand matting and bonded with epoxy resin. I could have used cheaper polyester resin but it may not have formed such a strong bond as the epoxy. After the layers of fibreglass had cured I also bonded a stainless steel plate to the repair, in the hope that it reinforced the stanchion base a little (Figure 6).

Finally I re-drilled the repaired deck and fitted the stanchion and base. Then I had to re-fill the holes I'd drilled under the toe rail (Figure 3).

Figure 6

Other than white filler visible at the stanchion base, I'm very happy with the repair. It's probably stronger now than when built. I just don't understand why the stanchions were fixed through glass fibre decking without any reinforcing - there's no strength there at all!

Are all First 18s like this? "