1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fixing the Nor’easter Damage

There are two areas on the aft deck hardtop that took the brunt of the damage from the tent frames that were broken by the big Nor’easter in March 2018, one at the back and the other at the front. But there was also damage on the sides of the hardtop, and the nonskid got badly gouged. With the tent altered to permit repairs to proceed, the team got on with the work.

The rear edge of the hardtop was abraded deep into the fiberglass

The front edge of the hardtop was beat up by a 3″ deck screw sticking up from a broken tent frame frame

Imagine a wind-powered needle scaler beating on the paint for a full day, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the damage. The point of the screw went deep into the fiberglass matrix.

Fiberglass repair on the back edge

Fiberglass repair and fairing at the front of the hardtop

Fairing the back edge

Fiberglass and fairing on the side

While the guys were busy fixing the storm damage, I’d been thinking about a problem I’d been staring at for a few years, trying to come up with a way to fix it.

One of the hardtop frames had separated from the under side of the hardtop fiberglass

Zooming in, you can see where the bond between the mahogany frame and fiberglass had failed

Zooming in more, you can see where gravity won the battle of the bond

I don’t know what the bonding agent is, but it doesn’t seem to be as hard as thickened epoxy. The hardtop is a clamshell, with a top and bottom that are bonded around the perimeter and to each frame. The bonding material stuck well to the fiberglass and to the mahogany frame, but it failed in the middle some time decades ago.

The lower half of the hardtop clam shell isn’t in contact with the frame

I stuck the camera up into the space between the upper and lower halves of the hardtop clam shell. It almost looks like the bottom side wasn’t even bonded to the frame. If so, that’s pretty sloppy manufacturing by Chris Craft back in the day.

It’s pretty clear there’s no bonding agent between the wooden frame and the lower fiberglass panel

Same problem on the starboard side

The bond held in the middle five feet or so of the frame, but it failed on both sides for 18~24 inches.

My Harbor Freight multi-tool worked well to clean out the bonding agent

Next, I shaped some mahogany to fill the gap

Ditto for the starboard side

Then I wetted out the filler pieces, saturated the hardtop frame and fiberglass with epoxy, then mixed in wood flour and cabosil

That turned out pretty good

Hopefully, locking it in place here will stop any further sagging

I managed to fix this problem without messing up the paint in the area, but the Nor’easter repairs gave me an opportunity with less risk since the guys have to spray this whole area anyway. While I was doing that, the guys moved on to sanding and repairing the nonskid.