Stanchions

As long as we had all the all of our cabinetry taken apart to install new chainplates it seemed like a good time to re-bed all of our stanchions.  Stanchions are the posts that hold up the lifelines.  The lifelines are cables that run around the deck to help keep people on the boat.  Unfortunately, they are about two feet high, which is a great height to trip people overboard, so mostly you just hang on to something as you move around on deck and hope that you don’t need the lifelines to keep you where you belong.  However, if the worst happens and you do need the lifelines, you’ll want them to remain attached to the boat.

Anyway, ours had not been re-caulked in the 33 years since they were installed and some of them were leaking.  None of the leaks were bad, but leaks lead to mold and that’s not welcome on our boat.  There was also the same issue we had where the mast passed through the deck.  Water was getting into the deck core and weakening the deck around the stanchion deck plates.  We could see this on the deck as there were cracks in the gelcoat surrounding the stanchions.  Gelcoat is like paint for boats.  The fiberglass is more flexible than the gelcoat, especially when the core gets wet, so it flexes, the gelcoat can’t flex as much, so it cracks.  Around some of the stanchion bases we could see cracks in the gelcoat, so we knew that the core was wet.  The area that was wet was fairly large and would require more than just a few small holes in the deck to remove the damaged core.

There are a couple of ways to fix this problem; the first is to strip the fiberglass off the deck to expose the entire wet core.  Once exposed, the wet core is removed, the deck is glassed back over then gelcoat is painted on top and non-skid is added to match the rest of the deck.  Then there is the easy way which is the option we chose.  The bases of the stanchions are about 4x5 inches, so we would remove a base then take a 3” hole saw and cut a 3” hole under the base where it would later be hidden.  We then used an allen wrench stuck into a drill to clean out the wet core between the deck.  Between the allen wrench, a pick, a long screwdriver and a vacuum we cleaned out all the wet core in the deck without removing any of the fiberglass or non-skid.  We did have a 3” hole in the deck, but that would later be covered with the stanchion base.

We used a hole saw to cut a 3" hole in the deck beneath the stanchion base.

All the wet wood was removed until there was only clean fiberglass left.

 

Once the hole was cleaned out we had five small holes passing all the way through the deck.  These were four bolt hole and a small guide hole from the hole saw.  Typically, to fill the holes we would apply a strong tape under the holes from inside the boat.  While doing our chainplates we used this method with marginal success.  We ended up with a lot of resin running into the cabinets and very little staying in the holes.  So, we came up with a better solution when it came time to fill the holes in the deck.  While typical fiberglass resin is very thin, there are thicker, quicker setting resins.  We put some very thick resin in to cover up the small holes that went all the way through the deck just to seal up the holes.  We let that dry for 24 hours then we went back and filled the rest of the 3” hole with glass mat and thin resin.  With this method, no resin ran into the inside of the boat.  It took an extra day, but it saved a lot of mess and headaches.  Since the decks are sloped we added tape to the lower sections of the whole, so that we could fill the hole all the way to the top.  After another 24 hours the resin was dry and ready to be drilled.

This is where a stanchion base was removed, a 3" hole cut out, all the wet wood removed then the whole thing filled with fiberglass mat and resin.

 

 

 

We waited until we had a couple of nice days then finished the job.  Since the holes were now filled with fiberglass they had to be drilled out.  Then we had to make sure the backing plate lined up with the new holes or re-drill that, too.  We countersunk the holes to give the sealant a little extra depth around the bolts and we were finally ready to reassemble the stanchions.  We covered the area under the stanchion base with a UV resistant caulk and filled the newly drilled holes with the caulk.  We placed the stanchion base in place and pushed the bolts through the deck.  Wendy held each bolt in place with a screw driver while I went below to place washers and nyloc nuts on the bolts.  We tightened the nuts, cleaned up the caulk and we were finished.  After letting the caulk dry for another 24 hours we sprayed water on the stanchions to make sure there were no leaks.  There were no leaks – Success!

 

The bolts holes are drilled.



The bolt holes are counter sunk to give a little more room for caulk.

 

The caulk is added.  We used 3M 4200 caulk as it is UV resistant.

 

 

We have completed the port side stanchions and it took about 2 weeks of spare time.  Now we need to complete the starboard side, but only one of those is leaking and very minimally, so we are not in a big hurry to do those.  We have some other things that are a little more urgent that we’ll take care of first.

Stanchion re-installed.  Not a good job with the caulk, I should have put some tape around the base to make it more clean.  Oh, well, we still have the starboard side so I can perfect my technique.

 

 

Wendy gets bit

I was in the middle of writing a post about re-bedding our stanchions, but something else came up about which to write.  Wendy has been walking dogs over at the St. Lucie County Humane Society and enjoying it very much.  She often comes home exhausted, dirty and bleeding, but not seriously injured.  Her record so far is 17 dogs in one afternoon; that’s a lot of walking.

This weekend she volunteered to bring a dog out to the local Tractor Supply Co to a publicity event.  The shelter brings out the really cute, well behaved dogs so that people can meet them, fall in love and hopefully adopt them.   Wendy had a cute, sweet pit bull picked out as the one she wanted to bring along.  However, the people running the event had another dog in mind.  She was asked to bring a little Jack Russell Terrier named Boston.  She had walked him before and he did well on the leash.  The hard part, like all Jack Russell’s, is that once off the leash, he was crazy!  He would run around in circles until Wendy was tired just watching him.  Then when she tried to put the leash back on he would run away.  He was a sweet dog, though and she liked him as far as little dogs go, so she wasn’t too disappointed in having to bring him to the event.

At the Tractor Supply Co everything started off just fine.  Like many smaller dogs, he was a little nervous, so Wendy took him for a walk around the parking lot and through the store.  After returning to the meet and greet area Boston still acted nervous, so Wendy started giving him treats.  He quickly learned how to sit and to take the treats without snapping any fingers off.  Then he jumped into Wendy’s lap, laid down and finally relaxed.

A short while later, a little girl and her father stopped by and asked if she could pet Boston.  Since he had shown no aggression to anyone, Wendy said, “sure”.  The little girl stepped in and tentatively pet Boston and all seemed ok, until he suddenly lunged and snapped at her.  She wasn’t injured, she wasn’t upset, it didn’t look like the dog had actually touched her, but her dad quickly took her away and they went into the store.

Shortly after that the little girl’s father lost his mind.  He came back out of the store, grabbed poor little Boston by his neck right from Wendy’s lap and started to walk away with him.  Wendy tried to grab the dog as he was being lifted from her lap and in his panic, Boston bit her.  At the time she didn’t even notice. The guy lifted Boston above his head and out of Wendy’s reach, but she continued to pull on his shirt and demand that he put the dog down.  Other people started closing in on him and finally, he slammed little Boston straight down onto the concrete sidewalk.  At that point, his daughter did start crying from realizing her dad could be so cruel as to hurt a tiny, defenseless animal.

A lot of things happened at once after that.  The dog quickly jumped back to his feet, but was only standing on three legs.  A few minutes later he fell down.  The head organizer picked him up and, even though he had a broken leg, Boston didn’t snap or snarl, then she took him off to an emergency clinic.

Wendy stood there in shock not believing that anyone could do something like that.  She didn’t even realize he hand was dripping a large puddle of blood onto the sidewalk.  An EMT who was shopping there came over to help and then a nurse showed up.  They both got her cleaned up and gave her paper towels to wrap around her hand.

The idiot grabbed his daughter, threatened to call the police and walked away to his truck.  The crowd that had gathered let him know he needn’t bother calling the police because they had called both the police and animal control to report him.  The crowd sent someone over to get his license plate number in case he decided to leave and people took pictures of him, his truck and his license plate.  He ended up leaving before the police arrived, but later returned for some reason.  We’re not sure if he returned because he thought he was right or if he recognized that leaving was only going to compound his problems.

When the police and animal control arrived they took control of the situation, taking statements from all the witnesses; there were about twenty of them.  They took a statement from Wendy and asked if she would be willing to testify in court; she of course, said yes.  They looked at her hand and told her she had to go to the hospital.  She was going to skip it, but they pressured her into going.  She went to an Urgent Care clinic where they re-cleaned the wounds and applied a dressing.  The doctor prescribed 10 days of an antibiotic and some pain medication.  She needs to wash her wound and redress it twice a day until it is healed.  It is sore, but looks clean and she probably won’t have any issues.

Wendy's bandaged hand

After Wendy left, the guy returned to face the police.  He was charged with animal cruelty and lead away in handcuffs.  The police were very considerate of his daughter and did everything they could to insulate her from the arrest.  Unfortunately, they had to take the daughter in too, because there was no one else around to take her.

There may be some people reading this who have children and think, “That dog got what he deserved.”  My thoughts on that are, first, no animal deserves to be treated like that for any reason, ever.  This wasn’t someone who was protecting his daughter, this was someone who has an illness and is a danger to society.  Secondly, even the police said that if he had done that as a reaction to the dog snapping at his daughter they would have had a difficult time filing charges.  The problem is he walked away.  He and his daughter walked into the store then something in his mind snapped and he made the mistake of coming back out.  At that point the police considered it an act of vengeance and could easily justify the charge of animal cruelty.  This event traumatized Wendy and just reading this story left her in tears.  If this guy ends up in jail I’ll feel very sorry for his daughter, but I’ll never feel sorry for him.

The shelter had a hard time deciding whether to save the dog or not.  It was going to be an expensive operation to repair the little guy’s leg and their budget is not that big.  Petco, who had nothing to do with any of this, stepped in and offered to pay for half the cost to save Boston.  With Petco’s help the shelter decided to save Boston, so he is having his surgery and it expected to fully recover, at least physically.

Wendy hopes to go visit Boston tomorrow to see how the little guy is doing.