Bajansailor
Well-Known Member
I have just received an email from some friends who are living on board their 18 year old Vancouver 32 in the Med. This is a copy of a letter they sent to the Vancouver Owners Association.
The deck in way of the chain plates is lifting, and they are worried about the tabbing securing the knees to which the chainplates are secured to. They were asking me for some advice, and I thought I would see what the Forum reckons about these loose knees??
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Karin said :
We feel that our recent discovery of the knees breaking away from the laminate, which was intended to spread the load of the intermediate and cap shrouds to the hull, is serious enough for us to write an urgent letter to the association. Perhaps other owners should check to make sure they do not have a similar problem.
We noticed last season that the deck seemed to be 'humping up' in the vicinity of the main chain plates. Ever since we bought Cresswell Jenny over 10 years ago we had noticed minor hair line cracks in the decks’ gelcoat in the vicinity of the slots where the chain plates pass through the deck.
Some years ago we rang Northshore to ask about these cracks & were told to peel back the carpet to check the laminate was still attached to the hull. This we did & all seemed well, but in light of the humping decks, we suspect that the knees have been placing undue pressure on the underside of the decks for many years.
When we recently peeled back the carpet lining (this time from around the side/face of the knees), we found that the fibreglass laminate, which we now know is intended to secure the knees to the hull, had become totally detached from the sides of the knee and did not wrap around the face of the knee at all!
In fact it was so detached, and the visible surface of the side of the knees was so clean, that we thought this laminate had never meant to be attached, though we could not think what purpose these unattached laminates could have had.
We rang Northshore and, as fate would have it, 3 weeks earlier they had had a V32 into the yard with the same symptoms of distorted deck, but on that boat the deck had actually cracked.
From the description given in a telephone conversation with Northshore the laminate had also come unstuck from the knees causing all the load to be transferred to the underside of the deck.
To cure the problem the carpet lining will have to be peeled back, the chain plates removed and the failed laminate ground back to the hull (a messy job), before re-fixing the knees and then laminating them to the side of the hull.
I think special attention is needed to prepare the surfaces of the knees as it is obvious that there was very poor adhesion between the laminate and the knees.
I have to say the quality of the original laminating job was not good and not what we would expect from a quality boat builder.
As we are currently on the island of Samos, Greece, we will not undertake these repairs until the spring, as we also wish to replace the carpet with some washable padded vinyl we have yet to source. We will be back in GB in December & will visit Northshore in order to confirm the repair technique once they have seen our photos.
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I think that they should be able to carry out satisfactory repairs themselves - they definitely should use epoxy (not polyester) to ensure good adhesion. But it will be a messy job, involving lots of sanding / grinding, and dust flying everywhere - hopefully they can get a grinder that can be hooked up to a vaccum cleaner (?). Has anybody had experience of these, are they effective?
The deck in way of the chain plates is lifting, and they are worried about the tabbing securing the knees to which the chainplates are secured to. They were asking me for some advice, and I thought I would see what the Forum reckons about these loose knees??
------------------------------------
Karin said :
We feel that our recent discovery of the knees breaking away from the laminate, which was intended to spread the load of the intermediate and cap shrouds to the hull, is serious enough for us to write an urgent letter to the association. Perhaps other owners should check to make sure they do not have a similar problem.
We noticed last season that the deck seemed to be 'humping up' in the vicinity of the main chain plates. Ever since we bought Cresswell Jenny over 10 years ago we had noticed minor hair line cracks in the decks’ gelcoat in the vicinity of the slots where the chain plates pass through the deck.
Some years ago we rang Northshore to ask about these cracks & were told to peel back the carpet to check the laminate was still attached to the hull. This we did & all seemed well, but in light of the humping decks, we suspect that the knees have been placing undue pressure on the underside of the decks for many years.
When we recently peeled back the carpet lining (this time from around the side/face of the knees), we found that the fibreglass laminate, which we now know is intended to secure the knees to the hull, had become totally detached from the sides of the knee and did not wrap around the face of the knee at all!
In fact it was so detached, and the visible surface of the side of the knees was so clean, that we thought this laminate had never meant to be attached, though we could not think what purpose these unattached laminates could have had.
We rang Northshore and, as fate would have it, 3 weeks earlier they had had a V32 into the yard with the same symptoms of distorted deck, but on that boat the deck had actually cracked.
From the description given in a telephone conversation with Northshore the laminate had also come unstuck from the knees causing all the load to be transferred to the underside of the deck.
To cure the problem the carpet lining will have to be peeled back, the chain plates removed and the failed laminate ground back to the hull (a messy job), before re-fixing the knees and then laminating them to the side of the hull.
I think special attention is needed to prepare the surfaces of the knees as it is obvious that there was very poor adhesion between the laminate and the knees.
I have to say the quality of the original laminating job was not good and not what we would expect from a quality boat builder.
As we are currently on the island of Samos, Greece, we will not undertake these repairs until the spring, as we also wish to replace the carpet with some washable padded vinyl we have yet to source. We will be back in GB in December & will visit Northshore in order to confirm the repair technique once they have seen our photos.
--------------------------------------
I think that they should be able to carry out satisfactory repairs themselves - they definitely should use epoxy (not polyester) to ensure good adhesion. But it will be a messy job, involving lots of sanding / grinding, and dust flying everywhere - hopefully they can get a grinder that can be hooked up to a vaccum cleaner (?). Has anybody had experience of these, are they effective?
