On 3 Jan 2020, at 16:21, Arno Luijten <arno.luijten@...> wrote:

Dear forum,

I discovered some water ingress in the rear locker of the boat and traced it back to failing sealant under the foot of the removable stanchion. So I removed the foot to discover a bit of sloppy work from Amel.
The hole goes trough the sandwich-deck leaving the balsa core exposed. The protection with caulking is insufficient as the three bolts that hold the foot cannot hold the foot completely in place as the sandwich flexes around the hole (compression of the balsa) ever so slightly. After some years this will cause the caulking to loose its seal and water will get to the balsa core.
On the long run this will have very bad consequences for the deck.

To remedy this I remove all caulking and removed the balsa core as far as I could between the two glass-fiber layers (about 3 or 4 cm deep). This also clears the three bolt-holes. Next I made sure it dried out completely, Impregnated the cavity as best I could with thin epoxy. After the epoxy set I filled the cavity completely with thickened epoxy. After this epoxy was set I re-drilled the boltholes. Finally I replaced the stanchion-foot with some Sikaflex. Because the boltholes are now in massive material you can properly tighten them, making the foot more stable and making the life for the caulking easier.

Regards,

Arno Luijten
SV Luna,
A54-121