Last fall, I noticed some dry rot around the carriage bolts that fasten the bronze winch pad to the cockpit coaming on Shaula (hull 59, 1981). The honduras mahogany coamings had been epoxied sealed, primed and painted for about 15 yrs ago. I had never pulled these bolts, so their bedding was done by SLM in 1981.
Removing the bolts wasn?t easy because the nuts were corroded on, and of course the square subhead of the bolts wouldn?t grip the rotten wood. I decided to use an extractor (easy-out) to hold the head while I used a socket wrench on the nut. A big crescent wrench worked better than vise-grips to keep the square end of the extractor from turning. Once the carriage bolts were removed, the hex head bolts holding the winch pad to the deck were easily removed.
Although urethane or polysulfide bedding compound had been used to seal the pad to the deck, Dolphinite was used to bed the pad to the coaming. It had obviously dried up over the decades and allowed water access to the wood.
The rest of the job was more straight-forward. I filled the bolt holes with epoxy filler, redrilled the holes, reinstalled the pad using Boatlife bedding compound, and filled the small holes in the bolt heads with epoxy filler. Finally I used epoxy sealer and primer on the wood coaming where needed, sanded it all, and put on the enamel finish coats. Seattle?s October weather has frequent days of rain, so keeping the wood dry during the job was a challenge.
I suspect this problem is fairly common in older BCC?s. I wonder how others have solved this problem? A friend suggested hack sawing a slot in the bolt head, but I thought that would probably gouge up the surrounding wood.
