Anybody ever have a spray deck detach in part (or in whole) from their boat?
What did you do about it?
Happened to the rear end of the spray deck recently, from the velcro to about 135 degrees the other side, and I didn’t wanna bug Sheri with my battered old red boat (it’d be like the fifth visit to the Doctor herself) so opted to “repair” it with home-remedy.
It’s holding up to some little creek shenanagins, but I know there are a bunch of people out there who must o’ had the same experience…mostly interested in responses that put the deck back onto the boat instead of just finishing the job by taking it all the way off or limping along with it loose-ish.
This sounds like the pretty classic ‘retro deck delamination’ we occasionaly see, especially on boats with the most history. It appears to have to do with chemistry changes in the fabric, and is the trickiest part of a deck retrofit. When boats get sent in, we reglue the edges of the deck.
If you want to do it at home, I think the best solution is Aquaseal, and it seems like quite a few folks have done this too good effect, although it’s not as clean:
Clean the area to be aquasealed, both on the deck tape and on the boat, with alcohol or acetone. Let dry. Apply a bead of aquaseal, ideally mixed 50/50 with Cotol accelerator, between the deck tape and the boat, press together, and let dry. This works much better with the accelerator, which helps the Aquaseal cure despite lack of air exposure. After this first application is dry, apply a second bead of aquaseal along the outside of the spray deck tape / boat contact. Use something like a stick or little tool to lap / scrape the bead so that it seals well onto the boat hull, and overlaps the edge of the tape a little bit. Let dry.
This seems to be a good “spot fix.” But we can always just reglue this at the shop; shame to send it down to CO for it though. You & Eric could also probably do a good glue on it.
Sheri, and you give this a fact check? Sometimes I’m a little Mad Max in my methods.
Clean the area to be aquasealed, both on the deck tape and on the boat, with alcohol or acetone. Let dry.