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Anchor Pulpit rebuilds/core trouble foreward (and fixes)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Genesis
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Genesis

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Gezuz, what is with the people who put some things together?

The teak inlays on my pulpit are wasted and require replacement. So today, out came the wood chisel to get the boards off.

They were 5200'd down, and then black cauk run around the edges. Ok. No problem there.

BUT - on assembly, the people involved screwed the boards down from the underside. Of course there's no way to get THAT off without pulling the entire pulpit!

WHY? The 5200 ain't going anywhere, and the screw embedment was all of less than 1/2" - into teak, that's gonig to do NOTHING.

Except, that is, make for a real serious PITA on this project, because now I'm going to have to take a dremel to about 30 screw shanks and cut them off before I can replace the boards!

Grrrr..... (just venting here)
 
pulpit

Karl,
I felt your pain. I did mine in 03. While you have the teak off you might want to check the pulpit and deck core carefully. The pulpit has three layers of plywood under it that is untreated and sits flat on the deck. Mine was mush as was a 3x3 section of the core in the deck. It is a common problem. My friends 85 45 has the same problem. The main problem is leaks around the windlass and exposed end grain and balsa where the chain feeds through. I rebuilt the pulpit and saturated the wood with West epoxy and replaced the deck core from inside the rope locker. The core was Wested also. Then all holes had the exposed core sealed. Most of the screws in the teak inlay broke. The new inlay was just stuck down with 5200 and no screws. I also painted the pulpit while it was off. The job took me 2 months and was miserable. A local yard quoted another 46 owner 10,000 to repair his. I know why. Good Luck,
Dave
 
Deck core...

... in the anchor locker is ok. It was one of the things I looked at BEFORE I bought the boat. There was no way I wanted that problem.

I don't know if I'm lucky or smart, but I don't have trouble there. Now the plywood under the pulpit may be mush, but I have no way to find out without pulling the entire thing - and while that'd be bad, getting the windless out just to START the job is going to be a Battle Royale. That beast is HEAVY!

I may just do the teak.... or I may decide to pull it all apart. You know how boat projects are....
 
windlass

Hopefully your core is ok.I sounded mine when I bought the boat and it sounded good. It was not until I removed the rusted windlass with a sawzall that the damage was apparent. It seemed like a small area under the windlass, but as I started to cut it spread. Hatteras did not fill the kerfs between the sheets of balsacore and it made water channels for migration. When I got good balsa I would stop cutting, a couple days later it would look damp. A little more digging and bad core was found behind good core. This is part of the reason it took 2 months I wanted to be sure it was dry before sealing it up. I used saturated marine ply for the area under the pulpit I felt it would be something better to fasten to . All the kerfs were filled also. Weather it was luck or smarts hope it is dry. It seems to be a common problem.
 
pulpit

I had the boat yard dig out the teak on my pulpit and pour an epoxy mixture back to the level of the wood and coat it with non skid. One less teak area to maintain. One note it takes a lot of epoxy so if it's a do it yourself project be prepared to work fast. Good Luck
 
That's dangerous....

... the two rear mounting bolts are at the rear of each of the teak channels!

If you fill that with epoxy you ain't NEVER getting that pulpit off without destroying it.

My deck core is ok, and the hawse hole for the anchor line has had the core edges epoxied.

The more I look at it the more I'm convinced that someone had it off somewhere in the past before I bought the boat. The screws are in no discernable pattern and some have badly hosed holes while others, right near them, are tight in the base. That suggests that someone had the problem at some time in the past, tore it apart, "fixed" it, but put (new) screws back in.

Barf.

I'm going to fill all the screw holes after grinding them out with epoxy, and then lay new teak. I ain't taking the windless off nor playing with the deck unless I have a reason to, and I've checked the underside of the deck inside the rope locker and its sound.
 
That hits close to home.

I have some softness in my pulpit (and probably the deck underneath it as well), so I'm in the process of removing the Ideal windlass. That is a major PITA. Ideal suggests that, in theory, one can simply slide the capstan and wildcat off the shaft, but good friggin luck in practice. I got the capstan off with a gear puller, but now I'm having to have a custom designed puller made to get the wildcat off.

And this is just the price of admission to start rooting around inside the pulpit and deck. And when I'm done, I'm not even sure I'll be able to reuse the windlass, since the under deck plate is coming apart in chunks of rust.

Barf is right!
 
Barf - again

Ok, the pulpit is coming off.

I found a soft spot under the pulpit in the locker when I went to pull the line to do the hawse-pipe area.

Its not out of control - yet - but it ain't gonna get there either. Off it comes. The rubrail and bow rails were easily disassembled from the pulpit and bow rail tube. No big deal there.

BTW, the windless isn't bad to get apart. Here's the deal.

1. There should be a "manual breaker bar" on the boat. If not, you need to find or make one. It engages the two pin-holes on the top of the capstan cover.

2. Remove the nut and washer on top.

3. Unscrew the capstan cover. The capstan is fit with a key - pull it. It will come off. If its sticky, use PB Blaster and lever it up with a pair of screwdrivers until it comes free. Remove the key from the keyway.

4. The wildcat is a FRICTION DRIVE - you'll see the friction disks once you have the capstan off. Pull that. Again, it should come off. There is no keying on this; if its stuck, its corrosion on the shaft. Liberal PB Blaster use will take care of that; be careful not to get it on the friction discs unless you intend to replace them anyway.

5. There is a base plate under that which is ALSO on a keyway (separate key). Pull THAT. If the key sticks (it did on mine), use the breaker bar to hold it up and drive the key down on the shaft using a drift. Remove the base plate and key.

6. Now pull the circlip and the windless body is free from the bottom. Go inside, shut down the power to it, remove the electrical leads, and drop it. Careful - its freaking HEAVY!

The anchor roller plate and windless are coming physically off tomorrow, and if I get lucky, I will be able to get the pulpit off tomorrow as well. If not, it'll be another day or two of work to get through the sealant and get it free from the hull.

Then its time to "drill, dry and fill."

I'm debating using Starboard instead of Marine XL ply for the build-up between deck and pulpit on replacement. Anyone have any thoughts on that? Its rot-proof and quite solid - I'd think it would work really well and be damn near impossible to damage.
 
starboard

The problem I have with Starboard for this type of application is that nothing sticks to it. The wood was glassed to the pulpit and the deck has a crown. to get full contact and to not leave any void for future water to get into I mixed up a epoxy mush and after putting wax paper on the deck smeared it with mush then temporarily set the pulpit down in it. The plywood was already saturated with epoxy and should outlast me. Then the pulpit was removed caulked and bolted down.
This way there is a perfect fit to the deck.
It was amazing how hard it was to make the new mounting holes for the windlass, drilling through the epoxy. Hope this helps, Dave
 
Aha... got it.

Now I understand the original construction details. Got it. It didn't make sense before.

So basically the ply is a "core" inside the pulpit, except, of course, they didn't bother to epoxy seal it.

Great. I bet digging it all out is a lot of fun. Grrrr...

Oh well, I needed a nice project. Sounds like I got one.

I may do the "drill and fill from the top" deal on the deck, depending on how bad the core is. Cutting the bottom open is arguably a better choice, but that's a royal bitch of a job - I hate working on my back, especially when cutting fiberglass.
 
Re: Aha... got it.

Keep us posted, Karl. I'm probably about 3 weeks behind you on the same project. My windlass must be a slightly different model, as my capstan was not keyed.
 
Windlass

I just pulled my windlass to have it converted to chain. GalleyMaid just sent it back and I received it yesterday. Anyway...if you have a line only model (BB), it is slightly different than the line and chain model (BBHW).

On the BB model there are no holes for the manual wrench on top. Just remove the top bolt and slide off the capstan. You will see two snap rings--these do not need to come off. I just loosened the bolts from underneath and then used a length of 2" pipe to fit over the shaft. Take a long handled sledge hammer and hit that pipe to drive the windlass down through the deck plate.

Luckily since my boat has always been stored under cover, I don't have any soft spots to deal with, but my new deck plate is 2" bigger in diameter and I will now have 6 bolts instead of four holding it in. So....I'll have to drill new holes and maybe make up a new shim block for the under side.

What should I do about the old holes? They'll be covered, but I think I should seal them and maybe fill them with something.
 
Old Bolt holes

I would soak them with a penetrating epoxy like Smith's CPES to prevent water from wicking into the wood, then fill them with 5200. Also bed the entire area well with polysulfide caulk. Snug the bolts finger tight when you first install them, then tighten them with a wrench the following day, once the caulk has set up. This gives you a gasket-like effect.
 
Hmmmm.....

.... ok, now I'm a bit stuck.

My windless is an Ideal, Model AACW12-5

Got the entire top part of it apart ok, capstan, gypsy, etc. Below, I loosened up the bolts - but she won't move.

So what am I missing? I see nothing holding it on the top, and nothing holding it on the bottom.

Can't find Ideal any more in Riviera Beach either - are they still there?

Gotta get it out in order to get the pulpit off, of course...
 
Re: Hmmmm.....

Ideal is in East Greenwich, RI. Phone there is (401) 884-2550. I found them very helpful. They faxed me the schematic for my unit. On mine, I had to drive screwdrivers between the underdeck plate and the underside of the deck. It was well caulked in place.
 
Re: Hmmmm.....

By the way, if you get creative, and try to lighten the unit by removing the motor which mounts horizontally off the side of the underdeck unit, you'll find it is full of heavy messy (in my case very rusty) machine oil. Would you like to know how I found out? Yecchhh.
 
Thanks... found 'em

... they told me how they go together.

BTW, here's an interesting thing - they swear mine (from the way its together) is a Galley Maid, but the data plate clearly says "Ideal"!

Apparently, according to Ideal, there have been some hijinks going on between the companies with regards to stealing designs and such....

Fun fun!
 
Getting windlass out

I couldn't believe it when Rick @ GalleyMaid told me to hit it with a sledge hammer, but that was the only way it was coming out. It had rust holding the case to the deck plate and 5200 filling the hole from top to bottom. It also had 5200 in and around the lower shim block. You just have to be careful not to hit the top bearing and seal. Use a piece of pipe to slide over the shaft so that the pipe only makes contact with the housing, then whack it. I even welded a plate on the top of the pipe that I used to make for a nice even surface to strike.
 
Re: Thanks... found 'em

On mine, "Ideal Windlass, East Greenwich, RI" was actually cast into the unit (the capstan, if my memory serves me).
 
Mine too...

... its CAST into the deck plate, AND the lower housing (in the chain locker)

Nonetheless, Ideal SWEARS they did not make it, by the model number on the data plate. They also identified (correctly) the difference in the way the base plate is keyed - they say theirs is pinned, and Galley Maid's is keyed.

Mine is keyed.

I'm going to go over there and see if I can identify the separation between the two pieces, and figure out what I need to put over the top to get the purchase to whack it, along with liberally spraying PB Blaster on the joint.

There's an O-ring seal around the shaft which I'm sure will need replaced, but I definitely don't want to damage that area.
 
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