Rotted Wood at the Bow Eye

[Pacman]

Last Sunday when I retrieved my boat at the ramp I noticed that the bow eye had pulled out from the hull a bit.

Further investigation revealed that the nuts had pulled forward into the rotten wood that served as a backing for the U bolt.

Today I just finished grinding away the fiberglass and removing the remainder of the wedge-shaped wooden backing plate.

Tomorrow I plan to fill in that space with chopped fiberglass and epoxy resin and redrill the mounting holes so that the U bolt will be securely bedded.  

A 36  year old boat will definitely keep a person busy.  It's a good thing that I really do enjoy it.

[Bob23]

It's called messing about in boats, eh? Sometimes I think I have more hours in fixing, improving and just generally prettying up my 23 than sailing her. She deserves it.
Bob23

[skip1930]

That's a lot of work to R&R the wood and replace it with chopped glass.
Why not just cut another piece of pine and fit it into the vee with some 3M-5200 slow set.
It'll be good for another 36 years me thinks.

skip.

[Pacman]

The wood could definitely do the job and would last for a long time - but I don't know much about working with wood and I'd probably cut myself trying to learn.

Besides, I have lots of epoxy and fiberglass in the shop so I'll just use what I have.

[NateD]

I had the same thing happen with the bow eye on my '92 CP23 this summer. I replaced the rotted wood with an oak block bedded in thickened epoxy, then created an over-sized aluminum backing plate for the u-bolt. I hadn't thought of doing it with fiberglass. The hardest part was tracking down a u-bolt that was the same size as the factory one (I removed the old one with a sawz-all). I tried all the local hardware stores but had to give up and go to West Marine.

[Pacman]

Well, I finished the job.

The repair is definitely overkill but, because I put several layers of glass in the area around the bow eye before filling the "V" with resin and chopped glass, I might have the strongest bow eye ever.

When I redrilled the holes and fit the "U" bolt, it fit without any fuss.

No on to other things, like the rudder project.