Toe Rails Re-Bedded

I relied heavily on a post on the Islander 36 Organization website to get started on this particular project.

Now posting with photos!

The deck/hull joint on the I36 is an inverted L shape, with the deck capping the base of the L.  There is not much designed-in resistance to leaks, so the bedding and mechanical fasteners are pretty much all that is keeping the water out.  Another issue with the design is the toerail can be leaking toward the bow, and water has a path to run the length of the boat to any opening it can find along the way as there is a channel created between the rail and the edge of the deck.  I know I am leaking around the toerails, but am not sure exactly where.  No matter, as rebedding will take care of it all. (I hope!)

The toerails on the I36 are roughly 32 feet long, with about 100 bolts per rail, 1/4-20 oval heads with a flat and lock washer under the nuts.  As I am finding with most jobs on a sailboat, no job is too big, but access to faster hardware will make or break you.  The port side is not too bad, as all bolts are relatively accessible.  By relatively, I mean there is no contortionist act needed to get a wrench on the nuts.  However, the starboard side is another matter entirely.  About half of the bolts are in places that I can barely even see, let alone somehow reaching in while grasping a pile of washers and get a nut started.  Cabinetry and lazerettes abound.  So with me being me, I started with the most difficult side first.

I started by removing all the nuts from the starboard side, starting from the bow and moving aft.  The anchor locker in the bow provides some fairly good access to everything up there.  I used my handy Makita 18 volt lithium ion cordless impact driver, fitted with a 3/4" socket drive adapter and a 7/16" deepset 6 point socket. (insert Tim Allen grunting noises)

Moving into the v-berth, and the main cabin, there were few problems.  Most nuts came off without needing someone to hold the screw from the top.  On the ones that the bolt did turn, I had Anne hold with big flathead screwdriver and a cresent wrench.  Those that siezed up, I cut off with a Dremel tool.

Let me stop right here, and thank whatever helpful soul who painted the interior of the hull, and proceeded to paint the exposed bolt threads as well.  That was super helpful in trying to get some of the nuts off.  Especially in the real tight areas.

Once we got back toward the galley, the fun really started.  Here, the cabinetry starts to get fairly tight against the deck.  Also, there is some trim that cannot be removed, which required about 12 nuts to be removed by feel alone. 

Moving beyond the galley gets us into cockpit lazerette territory.  Here you can see someone crouching among the water heater, reaching back, and upward to get a wrench on.

The picture here does not really do it justice.

Here is me getting access to the last few bolts.  The rail is about at my knees in this picture.

Lastly, here is what you would see from topside during the evolution.  Me standing with a rather dull, shell shocked expression, trying to maintain my resolve.  You can see a good portion of the bolts being removed here as well.  The bolts, for the most part, were going absolutely nowhere.  They were very well sealed in place with old bedding material.  Hammering them up from below was completely ineffective, as you need to have some room to swing a hammer.  I tried the impact driver, but could not keep the flathead in the groove, plus no one makes a large enough flathead hex tip for drivers.  I finally settled on using my regular cordless drill, chucked the bit I did have, and used the slowest speed setting to back out each bolt.  I broke a few bits, but managed to get them all.

Let me stop again, and make additional thanks to whoever tried to stop the leaks by smearing silicone on each bolt head.  Also super helpful.  The screwdriver tips really grip like iron sliding around in a bed of silicone residue!

With the last bolt removed, the rail was lifted onto the nearby scaffolding.  The rail weighs about 60 pounds and is curved, so it needs at least 3 supports so that it does not just sag between supports.

The deck joint was full of old bedding material.  For the most part, it was all dried up and just crumbled away.  Some areas still were intact, and the bedding resembled a very thick peanut butter and fibrous material.  I used scrapers to get off the majority.  We followed up with a spritz of water and brush to get the remaining material off.  What remained at this point was removed my carefully scraping with razor blades.  I was trying to get down to bare, clean fiberglass.

I followed up with a 600 grit wet sand of the area that the rail rests.  This helped remove any remaining residue.

Here is the finished area after cleaning.  I know it does not look too clean, but much of the brown coloration is actually stained into the gelcoat.

The bottom of the rails also were cleaned using a combination of scraping the big chunks off, water and brush to get most of the rest, and further detail scraping with razorblades to get as clean a surface as possible.

As I mentioned before, we had some silicone on the rail around each bolt hole.  We used razor blades to take off the majority, and xylene to help lift what remained.

I then used a carbon steel cup brush for the Dremel and cleaned out each bolt hold and countersink.  This was followed by a final wipedown of the rail with xylene.

I prepped the deck by running a 1/4" drill into each hole to clean them up.  I taped off the deck and hull where the toerail edges are with some blue painters tape.  This should contain the squeeze out.

To put the rail back on requires speed and lots of helpers.  I reattached the forwardmost bolt loosely, and proceeded to apply a generous quantity of caulk.  For caulk, I decided on 3M 4000.  This is a polyether based caulk, and seems to be the replacement for the 3M 101 polysulfide.  I did not want a polyurethane based adhesive like 5200 or 4200 that would never be able to be removed again.  I was even a little leery of the 4000, as its has a holding power of 300psi which is still a bit much for most bedding jobs.  However, it does have good flexibility and exposure tolerance.

After getting a good bed of caulk established, I had helpers pivot the rail into position, and I started dropping bolts into place.  There was enough caulk to squirt up through the holes in the rail, and down through the deck.  Other helpers started adding washers and nuts.  We moved along the rail as fast as we could.

My initial intention was to draw the bolts only tight enough to start squeeze out, and then come back later and tighten the nuts to apply holding force after the bedding material had cured.  This is fairly standard practice, I gather, when bedding deck hardware.  However, the rail does not tend to lay flat on deck, rather it tends to lean in.  So in order to maintain the correct orientation, I needed to draw down quite a few bolts fairly tightly.  I tried to tighten just one or two, but broke the bolts when attempting to get the rail seated, so it required more.  Ultimately, the design of the rail includes a very thin bead along the bottom extrusion.  This should keep a consistent layer of bedding material regardless of how tight the rail is bolted.

We eventually got all the nuts on and tightened, and I repaid our workforce in Mojito's and dinner.

The next day, I returned to slice away the excess bedding that squeezed out onto the tape.  It was not a perfect tape job, but it took care of the majority.  There is still a little clean up to take care of around some of the heads of the bolts, but for the most part, the rails cleaned up pretty well.

A week later we did the port rail, and it went much better than the first due to better access to the bolts, as well as having some experience in the task.

With both rails replaced, I think we will keep rebedding deck hardware with the goal of getting the boat watertight.  Before that, it will be necessary to repaint the non-skid areas of the deck that much of the hardware will bolt to.  The next post will either deal with re-painting nonskid areas, or refinishing teak.  I'm in the middle of both at the moment, so we will see what gets completed first.

The Tasks at Hand

In this post, I will lay out the major repair items that need to happen this year.  I'll elaborate on each of these in due course, but for now, I'll just hit the highlights.  I had thought about providing an overall description, but that would have forced me to drone on and on about every little hose and fitting, and I'd rather just stick to what is relevant for now.

For reference, here is a link to data on the Islander 36:
I36 data from SailboatData.com

I used this site while researching different boats last year, and it is a good reference for basic boat data.

And here is the link to the organization that is active out on the west coast, of which I am a recent addition:
http://www.islander36.org/

I have to say that the Islander 36 organization website was, and continues to be, a great reference for my research, and for ideas on how to handle certain jobs.  The maintenance section of the website is a great Islander specific resource for just about anything.

Of course, I also have a fresh copy of Don Casey's "This Old Boat".  For novices who know little about how things work on a boat, this is an excellent tool to get started.  There are some detractors of his methods, but I don't know of a more relevant book for what I am doing.


1.) Deck

The overall condition of the deck is moderate to poor, in my opinion.

The gelcoat is heavily oxidized, and while there is not an epidemic of crazing, there is some light crazing here and there.  There is a patch that is heavily crazed, but it is under the companionway hatch, and I won't have to look at that too often.  I hear that boat builders, back when they were first figuring out how to build fiberglass boats, figured that more gelcoat was better.  The problem is that gelcoat is not very flexible, and will crack if the underlying substrate moves.  If it is too thick, then even a small amount of flex can cause crazing.  I'm going with that theory, as the deck under the most heavy crazing is very solid, and I can hardly feel it move when someone is up there jumping around.

I do have some stress induced crazing around the safety rail stanchions.  There are stainless steel backing plates on these.  I can see that no matter how big the backing plate is, a lot of force can be generated by flexing the stanchion back and forth.  I may have to fabricate some kind of base for the stanchion to rest on, and help disperse the load away from the edge of the stanchion base.

2.) Deck hardware
All deck fittings will be removed and re-bedded.  There is nothing left under it now, and I can see water spray underneath some hardware when washing the deck.

3.) Teak
The teak on the Islander is used for handrails, companionway slides, cabin rub rails and for the toerails at the bow and stern.  The teak used to be varnished, but there is not much left.  The plan, as of today, is to sand and refinish with more varnish.  I have been looking into just leaving it unfinished and letting it go silver/grey, as there is a contingent of folks out there that recommend it.

4.) Delamination
The only delamination that has occurred seems to be limited to the area around the aft shroud chainplates.  This is another design issue in my opinion.  The area of the deck where the chainplates are mounted was reinforced with an additional layer of plywood under the deck.  The chainplate itself is shaped like an inverted T, with the long base penetrating through the hull.  I think part of the issue is the portion of chainplate that resides in the boat, acts much like a coldplate during the daily cycling of cool nights and warm days.  I noticed condensation seemed to wick down toward the colder plate from above.  Another problem is exposed core material to the metal of the chainplate.
I plan to cut a series of holes in the bottom portion of the deck, dig out all the wet plywood, seal the holes and pour epoxy back in from above to fill the void.

5.) Toe Rails
Toe rails are almost devoid of bedding, and so I will be removing and re-bedding these as well.  This is a big enough job that it deserves its own task.

6.) Non Skid
Non-skid is a type that looks like some kind of cheese cloth was used in molding the deck.  The texture is very rough, and repaintings have left voids that water can stand in, and mold can grow.  Long term, I'd like to grind this away, and perhaps go with treadmaster.  For now, I will clean as best I can, and repaint with a rubberized coating, like Durabak.  My research leads me to believe that Durabak will be a good non skid product all by itself, and that painting it on the non-skid will fill in the holes that trap water.

7.) Keel Joint
The keel is cast iron, and the keel/hull joint looks to need some repair.  There was some standing water in the bilge, so I don't think there is a leak, but it looks like there have been regular patches to the joint.  I was going to let this slide another year, but I was taking a closer look the other day, and I think I will have to get on it this year instead.

8.) Compound and Polish
Based on the recommendation of a friend, I spot checked a few areas, and it looks like some rubbing compound and polish will bring back much of the shine on the deck and topsides.  I had thought about painting, and there are some valid reasons to do so.  But it will wait until I'm more sure about whether or not I'm ready for that.

That wraps up the exterior, now onto the interior...

The condition of the interior varies.  The most woodwork is in pretty good shape.  There are some storage cabinets mounted on either side of the salon that have taken some water damage, and will eventually need to be replaced.  The headliner is missing, and while this provides excellent access to the deck hardware above, it lacks certain aesthetics.  This will need to be addressed at some point, but will most likely have to wait till next winter.  I plan to install wood ceilings and headliner then.

9.) Plumbing
The freshwater plumbing is routed through the bilge, which makes sense to a certain degree.  However, after working in the bilge while cleaning, I believe that there it makes better sense to route it around the perimeter of the cabin, where it will be more hidden, and out of the way.  This will leave the bilge to the bilge water, and nothing else.

10.) Electrical
The electrical system has had 36 years of add-ons, repairs, abandoned wires and poorly routed cables.  I believe that it will be faster for me to just strip it out, salvaging only enough for pull cords for the new cables.  The plan will be to identify all engine wiring and label it.  Once the engine is isolated, I will then gut most of the electrical wiring throughout the boat.  Most appears to be the wrong type or size anyway.  I'll add a new breaker panel and battery switches, and run new wire and fixtures.  This should be fairly straightforward, as the missing headliner provides excellent access to the nooks and cranny's where the wire runs will go.

So that pretty much wraps up the major repair tasks at hand.  As of today, I'm actually partially done with some of the above items, but I'm still trying to get the blog current.  Next time, we will start in on some of the individual tasks.