Subject: Fiberglass deck rot.
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003

I have a 45 year old 16' Comet Sailboat with severe core rot in the deck. The hull is very solid with no blistering etc. The deck needs to be removed, I'm at that stage now, to be repaired or replaced. When built,glass cloth was only one layer thick on the underside of the deck and not completely filled with resin. The glass cloth is very porous and several of the supporting frames have pulled away from the underside of the deck. My questions is, should I try to repair this deck or just frame and build a wooden deck for the boat. If replacing the deck with wood frames and marine plywood, would your products work to glue the wooden structures to the glass hull? If I try to repair the core, I will probably have to cut it out completely, replace, re-glass, and replace the frames.

What would you recommend?

Thanks for you help,

Larry R.

It should be a little less work to do things out of wood. Epoxies are certainly fine and would do a superior job of bonding the wood to the fiberglass as long as you prep the surfaces properly and design the proper joint. Be careful not to overbuild which would make things heavy, or under build which would be too weak.

Doc