try to imagine this without a picture. the starboard shroud on my 16 pulled out of the hull taking the top portion of the deck with it. i now have two very large cracks in the top of my deck starting at the ends of the anchor bar and extending across the deck and outward, so on the inboard side of the hull they are about 2 feet apart. the deck is still sealed to the hull on the inboard side so i can open it and look in. any suggestions for repair would be greatly appreciated. should i extend the anchor bar? i can machine a new one. should i run some type of wooden or metal dowels through the fiberglass as i lay it...or on the inside of the hull? this seems like a high stress point so i'd really like to hear from someone whose had this problem before?
thanks for any input
-j
You could contact Hobie USA and ask them if they know someone that has done a repair of this extent before, etc.
I had a very similar failure on my old boat (sorry, no photos). In the vertical plane, the top of the hull skin is formed into a lip or J shape. The deck caps the lip and is glued to the hull. The shroud anchor bar bears on the lip. I believe the failure occurs when the hull lip cracks or is worn away. Eventually (or suddenly?) the deck begins to take the shroud load in shear, for which it is not designed. The result is a big chunk of deck torn out.
I think you will be faced with repair to both the hull lip and the deck. A big job, but if you are handy with FRP, it is doable. I think a longer shroud anchor bar is wise. My boat was pretty worn out by the time the deck failed. It went to the landfill.
A lot of people always want to repair these types of things. When there is damage to a structural part of the hull that is in some way load bearing, forget it.
It is not worth the money to fix because fixing fiberglass is a patchwork job. It will never have that same strength. Maybe it is just me, but I am not going on the water with a fix that is always in the back of my mind. "Gee I hope this holds".
I say New Hulls or Different Boat.
thanks for everyones advice, i've fixed the hole with no apparent leaking and plenty of strength at the shroud.
i ran a 4"x3/4"x36" piece of oak under the deck and screwed an aluminum bar through the top of the deck into the wood. the wood extends 10 inches front and back past the cracks. then i glassed over the cracks, the aluminum bar and the deck seam, and machined 12" anchor bars for added stability. i still need to sand and paint, but i doubt a hurricane could break that section again. so i put off buying new hulls for another season 