All About Seaweed

Pilothouse "Brow" Reinforcement

Summary
(please click on any of the pictures for a larger one - use the BACK button to come back)

The pilothouse "brow" is made from a piece of fiberglass formed with an edge on the font. It was through-bolted through the pilothouse deck and then gunked up with 5200. It was basically just cantilevered, hanging off the font on those bolts.

It definitely would not support the full weight of a person for very long. Now, I probably could have trained myself not to step right on it (most of the time), but that wouldn't help guests and kids from jumping all over it. When that happened, it would either crack or split, or the bolt holes would loosen causing leaks into the pilothouse deck and core.

I wanted to make it strong enough to stand on without any worry.

The first thing I did was cut and epoxy some supports on each end.

These were then faired into the surrounding fiberglass underneath.

I removed the bolts that went through the pilothouse deck, filled in the holes, and glassed and faired the brow into the entire front edge of the pilothouse deck.

The sides were also glassed over and smoothed in to the shape of the pilothouse.

After much sanding and fairing and more sanding, it was painted along with the rest of the deck and pilothouse inside.....

....and out.

I then added some support to the center of the brow by through-bolting it to the mast tabernacle "tangs", shown on this page.

Lessons Learned

It's a lot easier faring and sanding flat surfaces than curves (DUH!).


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