Anchor Locker Problem

[hatchetjoe]

I would be grateful for some helpful information. My next project is to fix the tabbing that is coming lose in the anchor locker. This is the aft wall of the locker. The first two pictures show where the separation is happening along the wall taken from inside the locker looking from starboard to port. The third picture is looking down into the locker from the starboard side hatch.

My question is the best way to repair this. I know I need to sand the old paint off the fiberglass before doing repairs. The question is the next step after sanding the area. One idea is to use some 3/4" SS screws to pull the gap closed and then glass over the whole area with woven cloth and resin. The problem with this idea is that I'm afraid that the screws will go through and stick out of the forward wall of the cabin. From what I can tell without drilling a test hole there is only one thin layer of fiberglass in this wall with gelcoat on the inside. If you compare the humps for the speakers with the placement of the speakers in the cabin in the last picture you can see that this would be very obvious inside. If someone knows that there are two layers with a space in between please let me know.

My second idea is to use resin thickened with microspheres to fill the gap and when that has set to glass over the area. My worry is that the resin might run down the gap and onto or into something that I don't want epoxy on. I haven't found a way to look at this from underneath the anchor locker from the area of the bow thruster.

The third option is to just glass over the area after sanding to cover the gap and hold things together. But will this be as strong a repair as either options one or two?

I'm open to other options or thoughts on the best fix!

Thank you for your help!

[hatchetjoe]

I decided to go ahead and use my second option to fix this separation of the floor tabbing from the aft wall of the anchor locker. I first sanded the area down to the clear fiberglass and then filled the separation with thickened epoxy. I used West 105 + 206 with 404 high density adhesive filler. The first picture shows the result after filling the separation. I wasn't sure of how thick to make it since I wanted it to run all the way to the bottom of the separation. At "catsup" thickness so some filler would slowly run out of the lowest areas. Then I covered the area with 3 layers of 4", medium weight glass tape. The layers were staggered, the first centered over the crack, and the second and third layers roughly 1" higher and lower. The final result is shown in the second picture. I've now painted over the area with 3 coats of bilge paint to try to keep water out of the fiberglass.

One thing to note it that the aft wall appears to be made of glass over a balsa core. You can see the squares of the balsa in both pictures, they are a little over 1x1 inches each. The wood core was the main factor that made me decide to skip trying to drill into the wall and set screws to pull things together. Since the locker is wet so often I didn't want to create spots for water to work into the wood.

I will post an update if I have to admit that the whole patch comes off after I start dumping anchor rode into it again.

[Jaredh]

Looks like that should be a solid repair.

If the tabbing delaminates again I would grind out the old tabbing, run a fillet of thickened epoxy along the bottom corner, then lay some epoxy tape over the top while the fillet is still wet. This will replace the delaminated tabbing instead of repairing it.

I like to use a plastic spoon to create the right radius for a fillet with this kind of work, very useful for scooping up the excess thickened epoxy to reuse as well.