Not as bad as it looked

Or was it?

Well, yes and no. So yes the post was knackered as you saw in the last post but the plywood insert in the deck turned out to be fine.

However…

The deck plate that the mast sits on wasn’t looking to good.

So that is meant to be flat but, take a look at that curve! Also, if you look closely there is a big ole crack in the forward end of the notch. A new one costs almost £250. Not happy!

And the deck is still compressed. It wasn’t the plywood that was at fault so what could it be? Some digging was required. Once said digging was carried out it transpired that the construction of the deck at this point, outside to inside was:

Gelcoat
Glassfibre
Bogging
Plywood
Glassfibre

At his point you may well be asking “what the hell is bogging?” and well you may!

Bogging is a lightweight filler made (usually) from resin and micro balloons. It is a very good filler but is not especially meant to go in high load areas – like under the mast for instance! Still, it meant that the repair was, in the end, pretty straightforward.

We dug out the bogging under the mast plate and about 2 inches all around and down to the (completely solid) plywood underneath. Bevelled the edges then filled the hole with a mixture of chopped strand and woven rovings. then applied a gel coat.

The second bit of luck I had was that the guy at the engineering firm that remade the compression post for me was able to repair the deck plate for less than half the cost of a new one – and a lot beefier into the bargain.

The result is a deck that was orders of magnitude stronger than the original. Result!