When we got the boat, we knew that the deck was soft around the port chain plate. As a matter of fact, the very first step I took on the boat was onto this soft area, and I almost stepped right back off with the thoughts of just walking away. Fortunately, the rest of the deck did not appear to have any soft spots, so I figured this one was primarily a result of the poor sealing of special "waste port" just outboard of the port chain plate. Frankly, we have not idea why one would ever need a wast port on a J/24, but as you can see, it is there.
I've been eager to find out just how bad this rot is, and this weekend, we decided to "dig in" and find out. The idea was to preserve the deck pattern above by cutting out the bottom layer of fiberglass from inside the cabin. This would allow us to dig out the rot from underneath without compromising the look of the deck from above, or at least that was the thinking.
As you can see the rot was quite extensive! I could just grab hand fulls of mushy rotten balsa, and just squeeze the water out of it. It was really bad. I used an oscillating cutting tool to cut through the fiberglass and then to shave out the balsa core. I let this sit for over a year (while the rest of the bottom work was being done) in order to get good and dry.
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