Standing Rigging/Deck Repair

[skip the first two paragraphs if you want to get to the repair]

When I first began living on Ardea I understood there would be a number of adjustments in lifestyle I would have to make. I started out without electric refrigeration or a usable plumbing system, but I got used to that, though I eventually had to upgrade. Also, little things like hitting my head several times a day became normal very quickly. But one thing I hadn't expected and that was tough to get used to was the sounds. There are a lot of differences between the auditory environment at the marina versus the urban apartments I've called home. I would consider many of them improvements- chorus frogs, night herons and footsteps on wood planks are more pleasing to me than drunk people and traffic- but it's hard to describe how much a forty year-old sailboat talks. And when you don't speak the language and you're hyper-sensitive because it's your first boat and so on... the paranoia is tough.

I had some previous stints as a liveaboard and new what to expect out of vibrations in the rigging and the rubbing of hull and fender and dock. But it took months to become accustomed to the unique creaks, the hum of the bilge versus the water pump, the sound of the deck hardware and so on. For a few months I was hopelessly paranoid- awakening with a start at every new vibration and every hum or scrape from a previously quiet corner- but I learned and as Ardea became home we began to trust each other. It was a relief to get over the "we're sinking for sure" reaction, but it wasn't long before I heard the sound no sailor likes to hear: mangling of fiberglass.

I had the always-disconcerting experience of hearing a fiberglass entropy increase while I was replacing Ardea's standing rigging. The damage wasn't actually all that bad. It happened when the large turning block at the base of the mast ripped out of the deck. I happened to be up the mast at the time on one of the halyards run through that turning block, but that's less scary than it sounds. The block was installed on two large spacers, which created a lot of torque on the deck. Furthermore, two of four bolts for the block were self-tapping bolts that terminated in the mast support beam. The other (forward) pair of bolts was through-bolted but without a backing plate. Over time, because of the torque on the whole contraption, water seeped beneath and rotted out the plywood deck core. While I was fiddling with my main mast rigging, the bolts tore out. The following is a description of how I repaired the deck and re-configured the hardware to avoid the problem in the future.

Here's the pesky turning block that turned the halyards from where they exited the base of the mast 90 degrees aft so they could run to the cockpit. Notice the short bolts on the left and the rottedness of the whole deal.

The hole doesn't look too bad from the interior...

...but from the exterior, the deck is pretty torn up and the plywood core is in bad shape.

2 inch diameter forstner bit I used to take out all the rotten wood that got chewed up when the washer pulled through the deck.

After drilling and sanding. Ready for penetrating epoxy to treat the now dry deck core.

Had to get creative to keep pressure from the interior so I could pour penetrating epoxy on the plywood without it seeping through. Penetrating epoxy fills tiny voids in the plywood that develop when water saturates the wood causing it to expand and contract (upon drying). This causes the plywood to delaminate and eventually lose all of its strength. The epoxy helps reverse the effects and adds strength to the wood, but the source of water that is saturating the wood must still be stopped to cure the problem. In this case, that meant properly bedding new hardware and avoiding the situation of lateral forces on horizontal deck hardware.

After penetrating epoxy and sanding the edges so they were tapered, I filled it in with West Systems epoxy and colloidial silica filler.

After sanding, I put down a couple of layers of fiberglass. It's pretty overbuilt...

Finished sanding it down (again) then drilled it for a padeye and painted everything with a polyurethane finish coat.

Installed a padeye and double block. I also had to add a collar on the mast so that both halyards could be routed out of the side of the mast instead of at the base. I chose this configuration because the pressure on the block is much closer to perpendicular to the deck surface, so the force is carried evenly on the padeye and its backing plate. Previously, much of the pressure was directed nearly parallel to the deck, which slowly pries at the hardware and, in my case, eventually destroyed the seal that keeps water from soaking the plywood core and leaking into the cabin.

The halyards run aft to the next turning block without ever touching one another, which was my main concern with this set-up.

This new rig has worked very well so far. The padeye is through-bolted with a stainless steel backing plate, so hopefully the lateral torque issues that doomed the last piece won't be a problem with this one.

Briefly on replacing standing rigging: the process was not nearly as difficult as one might think (a good bosun's chair setup is pretty crucial, especially if one wishes to accomplish this by his lonesome; many thanks to my friends at Hood Sails in Sausalito, who lent me their awesome bosun's chair so that I could haul myself up and down the masts dozens of times last summer). I replaced every piece of rigging except the forestay and increased the diameter on each of them. I paid for swage labor (swages are the terminal fittings that provide a threaded piece so that a turnbuckle can screw onto the wire). I considered using Sta-lock fittings so that I could put them together myself, but the increased cost for Sta-lock was more than the labor for the swages. Though some argue that one can make Sta-lock the more affordable choice by re-using the fittings, this requires disassembling them without breaking them, which can be very difficult. Anyway, I took off half of the old rigging and carefully replaced each piece that I removed with rope anchored somewhere on the deck. It is very very important if you are doing this to get as much tension on any rope rigging as possible (e.g., by rigging a purchase system). In hindsight, it would have been safer to replace the rigging one piece at a time, but this would have required many trips to Svendson's rigging shop...  not that I haven't made many, many trips there... next time I'll do it one piece at a time. In any case, other than a very stubborn spreader fitting, the process went relatively smoothly and was fairly cost effective (I spent about $2000 on all but the forestay, which isn't bad for a ketch).