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« on: April 16, 2013, 02:18:24 PM »
When I purchased our boat the survey showed elevated moisture around the emergency rudder access plate. Sunday I removed the plate to inspect the severity and found quite a bit of rotted wood and some sort of caulking had been injected into the area which appears to have made the situation worse. The rot extends all the way to the binnacle and it looks to be all the way over to the edge on the starboard side. The port side is better but not by much. I haven't pulled the fuel level window in front of the binnacle yet but intend to do so. I've asked a few people about repair options and gotten two basic responses.
One is to use some form of tool to remove as much of the rotted wood as possible and then allow it to dry for at least a week and then fill with thin epoxy to wet out the existing good wood. Then use thickened expoxy to fill the areas where the wood is missing.
The second is to remove the skin from the cockpit and replace the wood with a foam that is layed over with epoxy and glass.
I did some reading on the second method and most that I read had removed the bottom skin and not the top. It looks to be very difficult to remove the bottom skin and manage to replace the core from the bottom. If anyone has made this sort of repair I would appreciate any information or tips on what you did and how it worked out. Thanks.