Leaky Anchor Nest

capt. meares

New member
I have noticed a very small leak coming from bolts in the top of my bow on my 22 cruiser, that are holding down my anchor nest. It is a Columbia River anchor nest set up. I removed it all today and found the nest had not been installed with any bedding compound, but just three bolts with a 1/4 rubber piece between the nest and the fiberglass. Once removed, I noticed there were four holes that had some spongey wet wood from something else that had been mounted before they switched to a Columbia river set up. I am familiar with all the techniques on addressing this issue. My question is should I use the rubber piece when re-fastening the anchor nest? I don't know what the purpose if it would be, cause it obviously wont keep water out.

Thanks
 
No need for the rubber when remounting. Use your preferred boatlife or 3M sealant of choice or go the butyl tape route. I had to pull my setup off last winter to snug things up and mine was dry but barely sealed with some 4200 or similar compound.

Greg
 
It sounds as if you have some serious work cut out (no pun intended), to repair the fore deck, and make strong/safe again. When you re-do the Columbia River Anchor rig, you will be over drilling the bolt holes, reboring into the epoxy plug, and making sure that they have an adequate thickened epoxy around all area where there was core, so that the bolts will not cause rot again. Just a sealant is not adequate to prevent rot in the deck core.

Are you going to cut out the deck from the top, or the bottom to replace the core? Photos of the project, would be of interest.
 
Those Columbia river anchor nests are often mounted to aluminum boats that have a small ridge at the edge of the deck. The rubber is really just a spacer to raise the nest enough to clear it. Feel free to toss it.
 
Relief!.........
I bored out all the holes today with a larger drill bit. To my surprise, this took out all the moister/rot, and left dry light colored balsa wood on all the holes except one. The one hole that was the closest to the point of the bow had quite a bit more rot. I removed it all with a dental pick. It made a second drilled hole to get at all the rot. I estimate the infected area was about the size of a silver dollar, only oval shaped. I then beveled, taped off the bottom and filled all holes with epoxy.

I am fairly confident I got at least 95% of all the rot out, should I lose sleep over any small bit that may have been left behind that is now soaked with resin?
 
I am replying to both this post, and the other thread you started about worry. There you related that there was a leak into the forward cabin from the compromised are in the fore deck.

Where is this leak? Is it from around the hatch, or holes where the bow pulpit is bolted thru, or from the bolts in the deck which held the "Anchor Nest"?

Balsa is characterized as a hard wood (despite its low density). The cells are short and closed, so that takes quite some time for wood (or resin for that matter) to permeate the cells. I recollect that one of our botanists had some addition to the specifics of this in a past post. This is important, because many epoxy compounds will not get into the cell--and rot can continue.

There area reasons that end grain balsa is used--and part of that is the partial permeation of polyester resin into the end grain of the balsa for a short distance. But this seal is tenuous, and easily broken---which in some cases causes delimitation of balsa from the fiberglass. From the sides of the cells, the penetration of epoxy is not as good.

As Sunbeam mentioned the use of "neat" or plain liquid epoxy, I would take that perhaps one further, by the use of one of the super thin epoxy, with low viscosity--such as "Git Rot" or CPES (Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer) to have been infused into the potentially damaged areas.

There are some interesting questions which are taken up on the "Rot Doctor" web site:

http://www.rotdoctor.com/L/BoatL/Bqa.html

One answer about Git Rot vs the epoxy that they advocate:

If you look at the Testing Section of our website, "Git-Rot" is product "B".

"Git Rot" will work to some extent if conditions are ideal, although in our opinion a standard epoxy resin with a slow hardener will work as well. That's basically all that "Git Rot" is. You will note in the Test Section that of the 6 ml of "Git Rot" applied to the balsa wood, less than 25% was absorbed.

The basic problem here is that "Git Rot" or a standard epoxy will not penetrate far enough to give one any confidence that all deteriorated areas have been saturated, and if they have not been saturated there is no assurance that the rot process has been deterred. We have seen many cases where a standard epoxy resin is applied to rotted wood, and although it gets hard and solves the problem in a particular spot, the rotting process can and will continue beyond the penetration area of the epoxy.

You will note that 6 ml of CPES penetrated 16", and when more was added it penetrated over 20". On wood that is reasonably dry, even if it is under fiberglass, CPES will penetrate thoroughly. Holes can be 5-7" apart. With sufficient cure time (about a week) CPES will harden the wood. If the wood is badly deteriorated, then two applications may be required. If there is actually missing wood on the interior, then we recommend that the CPES treatment be followed with an application of our Layup & Laminating Resin into the same holes. The L&L Resin is VERY slow setting and will penetrate a long way itself. You can see a demonstration of this process in our "What's New" section.

It is worth reading all of those posts in the above link which apply to boat decks, and core--especially balls.

Generally you want the core to be completely dry--and heating and vacuum is one of the ways to dry it out. If there is some rot still left, it may continued to migrate, even though you have fixed the leak.

Did epoxy drip out of where the leak was--if not, then I would be more concerned. If it did, then you probably got enough epoxy into the area.

My recommendation of further treatment (and worry), would depend on where the leak occurred. If the leak was where the bolt holes were for the Nest, and you feel that you got it all, then it will probably be OK--just watch. If it was else where--like the bolts of the bow pulpit or a cleat some distance from the anchor nest, or the hatch, then, I probably would use a moisture meter on the back side of the deck, and see if there is elevated moisture in specific areas. I would then consider injecting CPES thru holes with a syringe.
 
capt. meares":3g7mbaet said:
Relief!.........
I bored out all the holes today with a larger drill bit. To my surprise, this took out all the moister/rot, and left dry light colored balsa wood on all the holes except one. The one hole that was the closest to the point of the bow had quite a bit more rot. I removed it all with a dental pick. It made a second drilled hole to get at all the rot. I estimate the infected area was about the size of a silver dollar, only oval shaped. I then beveled, taped off the bottom and filled all holes with epoxy.

I am fairly confident I got at least 95% of all the rot out, should I lose sleep over any small bit that may have been left behind that is now soaked with resin?

I think you've done a fine job, others my think not but at some point you need to draw the line on how much time you really want to spend on a particular project.
If you reinstall the nest and seal properly your repair should last the for years.
 
breausaw":1ehstffn said:
I think you've done a fine job, others my think not but ...

I am one of the "others" that chimed in on the related thread. I hadn't felt the "need" to chime in to say anything until the boat's owner posted about being worried because of leaving some moisture behind. At that point it became mostly about it not being fun to worry about whether or not you did a repair correctly. Even I (with the brain that won't stop on these sorts of projects) said it would likely be fine as-was :mrgreen:

However, if the owner was going to go in and re-do it (on account of worrying), then well, there were a couple of things that really could have been done a little better. The two that stood out in my mind were leaving moisture in there (when it was almost all out so not that much harder to get it all), and filling with neat epoxy only (which is brittle) where a loaded fastener was going to go in. If it was going to be re-done, why repeat that vs. doing it more correctly? (Last bit of moisture out, thickened epoxy after a neat coat.)

So, just to clarify that I don't think we were expressing disapproval as much as answering a genuine question posed (owner was worrying and wanted input).

Good thing is the issue was/is being addressed, because saturated core at a hardware penetration is definitely something to take care of.
 
Jay,

I posted further details about deck issues, when Meares started another thread about a leak to the inside of the cabin. It was not clear at that point if the leak was some distance or right under the bolt holes. It is not too unusual with deck leaks to have the inside leak some distance from the primary intrusion on the top of the deck. This raised a number of red flags--of something that needed further exploration and perhaps treatment.

Subsiquently Meares has clarified that the leakage was from one of the bolt holes. That being the case, he is fine.

Hopefully this post will help some one down the line and prevent extensive deck core damage. (The repair of which is both expensive and invasive).
 
Brent,
I mentioned using a moisture meter in the last paragraph of my post above. Yes, I suspect that even a cheap moisture meter from Home depot would suffice in a case where there was significant core intrusion of water. I don't know if I have any samples of cored deck left, but if I do, I'll soak one area, and keep another area dry, then try the Ryobi meter I have.
 
UPDATE #2...

I finally had some better weather so after all the advice and research I have received, I went back in and routed our ALL the rot and moisture. The 5% that I thought may have been left, actually ended up being like 10-12%. I then did it correctly and wet the edges with neat epoxy and filled with West Six10. I would not have known how to tackle this completely without everyones help, Thank you all. I can now sleep a little easier, but will not rest completely until I have undercut and filled every hole on the boat.
 
capt. meares":13ygtixe said:
UPDATE #2...

I finally had some better weather so after all the advice and research I have received, I went back in and routed out ALL the rot and moisture. The 5% that I thought may have been left, actually ended up being like 10-12%. I then did it correctly by wetting the edges with neat epoxy and filled with West Six10. I would not have known how to tackle this completely without everyones help, Thank you all. I can now sleep a little easier, but will not rest completely until I have undercut and filled every hole on the boat.
 
capt. meares":34bymkju said:
I went back in and routed our ALL the rot and moisture. The 5% that I thought may have been left, actually ended up being like 10-12%. I then did it correctly and wet the edges with neat epoxy and filled with West Six10.

Sweet! And good on you for going back when it was nagging at you. Isn't the 610 just a dream to work with? At first I cringed at paying $22 per tube.... then I used it. As I said before, I wouldn't build a boat with it, but for smaller-volume tasks I really like it.

capt. meares":34bymkju said:
I can now sleep a little easier, but will not rest completely until I have undercut and filled every hole on the boat.

I know that feeling. And I come by it honestly, having re-cored the decks on several (non-C-Dory) boats. Not something I want to repeat if I can help it (those boats came to me as projects with known-rotten deck core, so I never had the option to prevent it in the first place). Over the course of a couple of years (work sessions here and there as convenient) I've done just about all of the core penetrations in the boat. I started with the transom and cockpit, and have worked my way forward. This summer I decided it was foredeck time, and so did the bow pulpit, deck pipe, foredeck cleat, 'midships cleats, and forehatch (had previously done anchor roller). I find doing it in "general area batches" to be easier because I can just mask off an area really well and go to it. I'll spend just about any amount of time on protection if it means I can avoid clean-up.

My boat was stored indoors prior to my ownership, so at least this time around I'm starting with dry core, and just taking preventative measures - that's a lot easier (although if the area of water penetration is confined, it's not that bad either).

Of course others are out using their boats while I'm doing these projects, but, like you, I just can't relax thinking about it. And once it's done it's done. I find that once I get my various "tricks and tips and methods" going, things pretty much clip right along. On the other hand (and especially if one stores under cover) you could probably go decades without a serious issue, so I can also see why some folks "just go boating." Both ways seem to work for various boats/owners :thup
 
OK, I even Googled it, but what the hell is an "anchor nest"?

The images look like anchor roller guides as seen on pulpits...

Is this a regional term? Most posts refer to river-running, which we have little-to-none of around here... Rivers around here are wide and deep, and resemble elongated lakes, or so small that they are only suitable for navigating with a pair of waders on...

So, what's an anchor nest?
 
Here you go:

anchor-locker-with-anchor-e1329693075953.jpg
 
breausaw":p6x6b0k3 said:
breausaw":p6x6b0k3 said:
Around these parts it's a milk create bungee strapped out on the bow. :roll:
Ment to say :oops

Ain't your day for spellin'...I think it should also be "milk crates"
and your correction should have said "meant" rather than "ment"...

Another 3 beers and I wouldn't have noticed...
 
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