1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Helm Doors III

Good news!

The surveyor came by today and was very impressed with what he saw. He doesn’t expect the insurance company will have any demands before I splash the boat. He thinks he can have the updated survey report back to me by next Wednesday. I’ll immediately send it to the insurance company, so hopefully by Friday I’ll know if they approve of getting the bottom wet. I tentatively plan to start dismantling the tent on Thursday. Might have the boat back in the water for the weekend!

The missus did a great job cleaning in preparation for the surveyor

That’s a good looking dashboard

I keep most of the interior mahogany covered with cardboard and a moving blanket is usually draped over the helm, so not even I know what the boat looks like under all that protective covering and dust. This may be the first time I’ve seen the whole area cleaned up!

Diaper report from the fuel manifold: no diesel leaks!

So, that’s the good news. But now, I have a tale of woe from last fall, when I was furiously trying to get the boat ready to be splashed. I discovered a huge problem with the aft deck entry sliding doors: the doors are rectangular, which is perfectly common, but the door frames are not. The side decks on all old Chris Craft motoryachts are angled down from the bow to the transom, so water will run off. But the aft deck hardtop is basically parallel to the waterline. So the distance from the bottom of the helm door openings to the top is shorter at the leading edge than the aft. That’s not a good situation for a sliding door, where the top and bottom of the door frames are usually parallel.

When I tore out the original teak side deck and had it replaced with aluminum plate, the fabricator welded the 2″ square aluminum tube that would become the lower door frame at the same angle as the deck.

2″ square tube is at the same angle as the deck

When we were painting the aft enclosure in 2013, it didn’t even occur to me that the door opening wasn’t configured right. If only I had a time machine…

When I tried to install the linear tracks for the helm doors in late 2022, with the door closed there was 1/8″ gap from the top of the leading edge of the door to the upper guide track…perfect. But at the trailing edge, the gap between the door top and upper guide track was 1/2″! And when I slid the door open, the leading edge door top had that same 1/2″ gap, but the gap at the trailing edge of the door was 1-1/4″!

Those two surfaces need to be parallel or sliding doors won’t work. What a mess.

My first “solution” to the problem was a mahogany threshold

Thicker at the back, thin at the front

After making the threshold, though, I realized it wouldn’t work. The leading edge of the door fits in the pocket at the leading edge of the frame nicely when it’s sitting on the 2″ square aluminum tube. But with the mahogany threshold in place, it jacks up the trailing edge of the door, which opens a big gap between the lower leading edge of the door and the pocket that the leading edge slides into. So the bottom will need to stay as-is. The hardtop will have to be modified so it’s parallel with that 2″ aluminum square tube on the bottom.

It was around this time that the Boatamalan painter was doing crack repairs around the hull. Since he was on the lookout for cracks, he spotted several on the underside of the hardtop where it overhangs the side door entries. In other words, there were fairly big gelcoat cracks that needed to be repaired in the vicinity of the sliding door problem I was having. So we went for broke and got ‘er done.

I epoxy glued and screwed big pieces of tapered mahogany to the hardtop on both sides

Really wish I’d thought of this in 2013…

Fiberglassed then faired with Awlfair

The Boatamalan took over with crack repair and fairing

The last of the cracks were dug out

More Awlfair

After sanding the fairing smooth, we tented the area and sprayed Awlquik medium build surfacer.

After sanding the Awlquik, we re-tented the area and sprayed Awlgrip 545 primer

A dusting of black paint for a guide coat

After sanding the 545 with 320 grit, we re-tented the area again and the Boatamalan sprayed the Awlcraft 2000 Matterhorn White topcoat. The next morning, I arrived at 6am to find…

SHINY!

After pulling all the tape and plastic, the repair areas looked great!

With the upper and lower door frames now parallel, I was finally able to install the doors. But what a mess that was! To any other bonehead who takes on a project like this, pay very close attention to your future door openings early in the project!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Aft Deck Helm Doors

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

Jul24

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.