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.