Engine Hatch - sponginess

[Soundings]

The engine hatch on my Aquafibre 33 is spongy. It is nothing to worry about according to my surveyor but I do find it irritating. I suspect the condition is due to delamination of the fibre-glass sandwich so the question is does anyone known how to fix this - perhaps injecting foam into the cavity will do the trick?

Alternatively could I get a new hatch made up somewhere and if so I suppose this could be constructed in either fibre-glass or aluminium? Does anybody out there have thoughts/experience of this?

Thanks all

Colin

[DaveS]

Hi Colin

Send a PM to my son (GrantS), as he has just effectively dealt with the same problem on his Falcon 22.

He's unlikely to be around on the forum for a couple of days, as he is currently on the night shift.

Dave

[Gordon]

Hi Colin and welcome to the forum.

I had a similar problem when we bought Woodland Dawn, Calypso 28. I suspect ours was caused by years of hirers jumping onto it.

In our case tere was a visible split in the top . It is a 2 layer structure and I believe it is designed to drain, in our case it caused water to drip onto the engine after it had entered the crack. This I suspect contributed to the subsequent demise of the starter and then the alternator.

As well as a crack in the top the bottom layer was also tearing away in a couple of places. I suspect this was caused by an earlier repair attempt whereby somesone had poured half a pint of resin into the crack.

The repair I did was by sawing all round the inside to separate top and bottom and then laminating three of four layers of glass matt inside the top. It was when I attempted to separate the two halves that I discovered the resin. lots of sawing and muttering. It was this wad of resin that had transferred the force tearing the inside layer It was then a matter of glassing it back together. Annoying thing is I have looked at every other Calypso I could and have never seen this type of damage again.

Hope you get it sorted OK

[Soundings]

Thanks all, I will have to have a look and see what the glass fibre sandwich is comprised of. On my old Freeman the void between the two layers og fibreglass was filled with cavity filler (like that foam used for filling holes - it sets rigid). Where delamination had occurred I just drilled ho;es around the affected area and injected foam. This made for an extremely good fix.

Wish I new how the Aquafibre 33's hatches were made-up?

REgards

Colin

[Soundings]

Not too much coming back on this one and my view now is that the problem would be best remedied by a decent boatyard that know what its doing. Can anybody point me in the right direction? Richardsons are near to me but I do not know if they do private work.

Many thanks

[jimbo]

Yes Colin, Richardson's do private work and certainly have the know how to solve your little problem

[Julz]

You can buy a 2part mix for delaminated Sandwich construction floors such as those found in caravans, it gets injected in, and expands to fill in any voids if this would be any help to you. Its mostly used on sandwich constructions of ply/polystyrene/ply, but can be used on the monocoque bodyshells where its fibreglass/insulation/ply, so may work for you.

Julz

[Soundings]

Does anyone from Richardsons read this forum? If so their input on this would be helpful. Indeed mooring a Broadsedge like I do theRichardsons would seem the ideal place to have the work done.

Regards

Colin

[Antares_9]

If you do decide to go down the DIY route this link will give you a very good insight into the procedure.

http://www.cncphotoalbum.com/doityourself/rotrepair/rotrepair.htm