Re: Bayliner Capri unintentional restoration project
I've also fitted the slightly extravagant/bank-breaking purchase of...a new wakeboard tower! The old ski pole that was on the boat was corroded and I thought a tower would be better and now is the time to fit it while it is all apart so I decided to go for it. It is a Monster MT1 tower which was on sale and in black as I thought this would look good with the yellow and white. The instructions that come with t are really good and I found it pretty easy to fit...although I think it would be a much more daunting task if I didn't now have some fibreglassing/boat building experience.
The tower fits onto the cap which is a little flexible in places and not particularly thick fibreglass (although I haven't fitted a rub rail yet; just put some temporary bolts through to hold everything in place). I wanted to reinforce the areas where the tower was going to attach and ideally spread this load down to the hull so it's not just the cap taking the towing strain. I was going to do this with plywood stuck in place using PB (fibreglass putty/whatever it's called now) and csm over the top, but the guy from the wakeboard tower shop suggested I try core matt. The area that the tower attaches on has several different angles and curved in places so I decided to use the core matt as it should be easier to manipulate to the contours of the boat and get a good bond all over. I've not seen anyone else on iboats use this product but I expect I just haven't seen any threads with it in. I bought 5mm core matt so I could increase thickness and strength of the fibreglass quickly and easily. The boat was sanded with 80 grit in the attachment areas and cleaned with acetone. I placed a layer of csm first and cut a piece of core matt to slightly less than the size of the csm patch. The core matt feels a bit like a thin layer of foam and you need to apply resin to the underside before putting it in place otherwise it soaks up all the resin from the csm and creates a poor bond to the hull. I then put it in place and applied resin to the top side. It soaks up resin like a sponge! It conforms really easily but is difficult initially to make it stay in place on a vertical/upside down lay-up but saturates eventually and sticks well. It's really easy to remove air bubbles as it doesn't come apart very easily like csm does. I think if you are using it somewhere where it might get wet you need to glass the edges with csm afterwards to seal it (read this online somewhere) but I didn't bother as it is in an area that should stay dry when the boat is finished and it's fully saturated with resin so I don't understand the reason for this anyway.
Here is one of the finished patches of core matt:
With the tower attached through:
*Still need to touch up the black paint in a couple of places on the wind shield frames.
And here is the tower all put together. The bubble wrap is staying on the legs for a while to protect it against accidents! I think it looks really cool and it feels rock solid.
All bolts through the boat have been sealed with sikaflex.
