Bavaria 42, 44, 46, 50 .. with so called "Bulwarks Railing Base' : leaking

[ancanc]

Hi,

first: it took the name of the Railing Base from SVB, maybe it is wrong...

I have a leaking problem with my Bavaria 44 / 2003. Some of the Railing Bases are leaking. Here is a picture of the Railing Base:


All the Railing Bases are covered with a teak strip:




Everything is sealed with Sikaflex, unfortunately to re-seal the screws from the top it would be necessary to remove the teak strips too.
I am a bit afraid of doing so - they might break, then I would have to let make the whole set again --- $$$$
Is there anyone here who already removed these teak strips from the top? Are they glued to the teak underneath?
I see some screws covered with teak-plugs, is this all?
What layers are underneath? How is the deck joined to the hull? Do I have to re-seal this too?

Another possibility would be to drill two holes from the top for each Railing Base to access the screws from the top, re-seal them and close the hole on the teak with Sikaflex or a teak-plug again.


Thanks a lot,
Regards:
Andras


 

[SYJetzt]

I had such leaking railing bases too. I have cut away the teak only in the area above the bases to get access to the screws. Drilling a hole and leaving the teak in place is not sufficient as you need to get access beneath the base to apply sealant, so you have to lift the base a little. I replaced the selftapping screws, first drilling the vertical holes through the hull-deck joint and  using longer M5 bolts with nuts and washers on the inside . For the horizontal screws i took a little bigger sheet metal screws than the original ones , because i found no way to put a washer inside.

[ancanc]

I had such leaking railing bases too. I have cut away the teak only in the area above the bases to get access to the screws. Drilling a hole and leaving the teak in place is not sufficient as you need to get access beneath the base to apply sealant, so you have to lift the base a little. I replaced the selftapping screws, first drilling the vertical holes through the hull-deck joint and  using longer M5 bolts with nuts and washers on the inside . For the horizontal screws i took a little bigger sheet metal screws than the original ones , because i found no way to put a washer inside.

Thanks!
Was the teak you cut away glued or it came simply off after cutting it? Is there one more layer of teak underneath the top teak or only the hull-deck joint itself? If you look at it from the outside of the hull there is a kind of teak rail track with a tiny stainless steel cover on it. How far this goes sideways / laterally underneath the top teak?
I had a Bavaria 34 / 1999, the bases there were fixed with through bolts , washers and nuts - like yours now - although there was only one bolt for each base, no other fixing. Unfortunately there I had to change the washer to much larger stainless steel plates, otherwise as the railing got a kind of hit from the side, the washers and nuts were pulled up and I had my leak again...
Cutting away only the covers of the bases you could not reseal the hull-deck joint. My Bavaria is 20 years old, is it not better to

Regards:
Andras

[Yngmar]

The deck/hull joint isn't under the teak caprail (where the stanchion feet go through), it's under the rubrail (the one with the stainless strip on the outside).

[ancanc]

The deck/hull joint isn't under the teak caprail (where the stanchion feet go through), it's under the rubrail (the one with the stainless strip on the outside).

Thanks a lot - also for the exact names of the parts... It is not easy to find out these names for a non-native English speaker and online translators are not good at all for this.
Regards:
Andras

[SYJetzt]

In the area above the bases there was no glue between the base and the caprail. The caprail has a recess above the railing base and i have cut away only in the recessed area. I'm thinking about removing all caprails on my boat, so i did not replace the cutouts. But this will be a task after next winter.

[ancanc]

Thanks for the pictures!
I resealed two of the bases two years ago in the back, they do not leak now. I forced sealant into the hole between the caprail and the base from the side and I sealed the hole from the top too. Since then the two bases are dry. But I need an overall solution now.
The other concern I have is, that I think there are also leaks in the sealing between the hull and the deck. On this picture the small brown spots could come from water...:


The long white sealing is the one between the hull and the deck, isn't it?

If you could post me a picture from the same spot but taken from the outside of the boat I could see how the hull / deck / teak rubrail connection looks. like.

[SYJetzt]

see attached sketch

[ancanc]

Thanks, it helps a lot!
I am tying to understand my picture then, I was thinking that the bigger sealant part (hanging down from the top) was covering the screw through the base.. But it does not make sense this way.
The picture was taken from a side cabinet, camera looking up.
Are you sure, that the hull does not band on the top and goes underneath the bases / teak caprail? It ssems to me that on the top there are two layers of GRP.

Do you have a guess which screw belongs to what part here:



Is there anything holding the screws from the side of the bases or do they simply go through the GRP? Usually there should be something like hard wood to hold the screews... or it is simply the Bavaria-way? It is OK for the first few years, then they should by a new one...

The brown coloured marks could come from the "Nanoprotect Antgra" I am using to protect my teak, washed out by water and leaked into the hull...

[Yngmar]

Looks like yours is like our 40 Ocean was, which is like this (attached).

The blue is the screws connecting the overlap between deck and hull moulded parts. You see those poking out at the bottom of your photo. The orange is sealant, which on our boat was applied poorly and insufficiently. I took off the teak rubrail on both sides, pulled out the dodgy sealant (some of it just pulled out in meter long strips with no adhesion, others had big gaps as not enough was applied), cleaned it out as well as I could and gooped in several tubes of modern MS polymer sealant, smoothing off the outer edge and making sure to leave no gaps.

That was the end of any deck/hull joint leaks for us.

[ancanc]

Thanks, it leaves me no other choice than to disassemble... I was hoping to solve the problem easier - but she is 20 years old now, I cannot really complain. Maybe this can be better done in the spring where the boat is still on land and I can access it easier from the sides.
Regards:
Andras

[Yngmar]

It's actually easiest to do from the dinghy in the water, at least if you have access there Don't have to climb ladders and risk falling off (or if you do, you only get wet).

It's not terrible, you take off the stainless rubrail and then you find the screws holding the teak part and undo them (they were super long). A few of those were giving me a hard time, that was the only real problem there.

[ancanc]

Thanks Yngmar,

unfortunately in my berth there is no space between the boats - but we have an area for fueling and craning/launching - easy access from the side, I could do it there on a weekend, no one is working on these days.
Is the caprail or the rubrail anyhow glued to the hull/deck or to each-other, or only the screws hold them in place?

Thanks,
Regards:
Andras

[ancanc]

Hi,
Dehler laminates the hull and the deck together - I read - so they do not have much chance of leaking.  Would it be possible to do so for the Bavaria's afterwards too?  Maybe someone already did it? The caprail and the rubrail could hide the additional narrow stripe of laminate. How the "big ones" like Hallberg-Rassy, Oyster and Co. solve the stanchion base problem that there is also no chance of leaking?

[Yngmar]

Possible, sure. Worthwhile? Unlikely. Just replace the sealant and it's fine.

[symphony2]

There is no foolproof way of making stanchion bases immune from leaks except maybe on metal boats where you can weld them onto the decks. Laminating the hull and deck together is an alternative method to the one used by Bavaria and most other mass produced boats. However difficult to do and maintain good quality control and difficult to repair if it fails. I built my first "proper" GRP boat from a hull and deck which needed laminating together but it was a tricky job and I was never happy that the lamination was properly cured so I also laminated a layer of GRP inside. Horrible job.

[Bavaria 46]

We have had the same issue on our 46 (2008). From my feeling the leackages were not been limited to the stanchions. It seemed to be the whole hull / deck connection. We removed the teak, and put to layers of fiberglass fabric around the edge between hull and deck. In stead of the screws we laminated bolts in and fixed the teak with nuts. Lot of work but success......

[Molo]

Thanks for the comments so far.

We have similar problems with leaks.
I think they generally can come from rubrail screws, leaking seal between deck and hull, screws of railing base, screws from teak wooden panels ans screws from cleats.

You can see the assembly of hull/deck in this video:
https://youtu.be/GIciQXXkd4Q?si=HsS9StPo3Ip0TaF9

So I think the construction is a little bit different than shown before (see attached).



What we have done so far:
removed all wooden panels since they are directly screwed into the wooden base
removed the wooden rub rails
laminated the gap between hull and deck because the wooden base is/was already rotten a bit
resealed the (now larger) clamps
mounted a rubber rub rail
Tried to reseal screws of railing base



We are not leak free at the moment.
I think the rubber rub rail was not properly sealed by the boat yard.
So we will reassemble and reseal each screw.

We will also change the screws from the railing base to metric bolts and nuts and reseal them.
Hope this will help - we will report our results afterwards.

The leaks caused rotting of the wooden base and also rotten and moldy wall panels.
So we also have to rebuild the wall panels in the cabins.
Bad design of unvarnished wooden panels covered with the white faux leatherPVC-foam cover.
They can't dry fast enough due to the foam before getting moldy.

We will try to use hard foam PVC and cover with PVC faux leather imitate.

Test piece

Thanks Moritz