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.