Bavaria 42 leaks

[davehry]

I have a 2001 Bavaria 42 with teak decks and cap rail.

I've got a few leaks in the starboard quarter, which are causing water ingress to the berth.

Two questions:

One of the leaks is coming from a stanchion, another from the cleat. These are minor. If I want to rebed these pieces of deck hardware, do I need to remove the teak cap rail? It seems that there could be water ingress underneath that? The hardware is attached to the cap rail but I'm not sure what's underneath.

If that is necessary, any tips re getting it off and back on again?

Second, there is also water coming in through the hull to deck joint, as a hose test shows. It looks to me as though the previous owner has already had this off as there is a stripped screw on the teak toerail. I assume it should just pop off once all the screws are out?

I am hoping it has been glued in place with anything horrible, but if it were, how would I go about getting this off? Any ideas?

[Yngmar]

Cleats and stanchions are through-bolted on this type of rail. On our 40 Ocean there were access slots everywhere, although you need slim fingers to get to some of them. Have a look inside. The rear of the lockers had a small section top and outboard each that would unscrew if they hadn't used electroplated screws that long since corroded. Behind those you could get at the nuts and backing plates/washers.

The deck hull joint is accessible behind the rubrail. Looks like someones been at yours. There should be a stainless steel rail on top of that teak rubrail by the way, looks like yours has gone missing. It's notoriously badly caulked and when you pull on the caulking, don't be surprised if a few meters length of it just come out. I redid the entire length on both sides of the boat. Remove old, clean up best I could and apply some better sealant and loads of it. Worth doing.

The cap rail luckily doesn't need to come off for either of those jobs.

[davehry]

I should have said, I took the steel rail off already myself.

Thanks for the info about rebedding the deck hardware, good to know I don't need to pull the cap rail off.

I will take a crack at removing the teak rubrail tomorrow morning once I get that stripped screw out. Several of the other (long) screws are missing, not sure why; can I just replace those with wood screws of the same length?

I will say that the rubrail seems to be on there pretty solidly, I really hope it's not glued on.

Thanks for the info, the 40 Ocean is I think quite close to mine in its construction!

[davehry]

It's glued on. Heat gun and a plastic scraper?

[Yngmar]

Mine wasn't glued on. But it was screwed on good with a lot of those long wood screws, not all of which were obvious and several of them broke off and had to be extracted or cut. Yeah, you can just put new ones, but if there's a broken one not in the same hole.

No idea about the glue, perhaps the previous owner already did something with it? Or did you just miss a few screws? If so, you can stick an oscillating blade in from underneath.

[davehry]

I figure I'll go at it with a heat gun, scraper, and maybe some wedges.

Would Sika 291 be a good choice to seal it once I get the rub rail off?

[Yngmar]

PU sealant will work in this case as it should never see any sunlight there. If you can't find anything better, sure. I used a MS polymer sealant, which was easily available in Italy and cheaper than the old Sikaflex. This matters when you're firing ten tubes into that joint 

[davehry]

Once I got the glued on rub rail off (a horrible job) it turns out that the hull deck joint is mostly extremely solid, there was a 10mm x 2mm chunk missing. Sealing that has done the trick!

Thanks so much Yngmar for your help here.

I want to put the rub rail back on in a more rational way. Can I just pump a tiny bit of Sika into each of the holes and screw the screws in? Or is there a better way to do that?

[Yngmar]

Sounds like someone has done it and just missed a bit! 

I just screwed it back on, nothing wrong with that. The screws go straight into thick fibreglass, they were all pretty tight so no need for any sealant. Especially not adhesive sealant, which just makes it harder to remove next time.

[davehry]

Great, that's what I'll do. Thanks!

[aquapore]

I had leaks from stanchion bases. I got a crevice corrosion of the Al to ss screws. Had to gouge out the crevice and fill with epoxy with silica filler. Insulated the ss screws. Ok for 3 years now. Hope this helps.