Edson

The first problem I noticed was last winter when I would get puddles of water at the foot of my aft berth. I looked harder and found this water coming thru cockpit floor where the support for the table was thru bolted. So the first thing I did in the spring was to lift the table and investigate. What I found was a mess. The table is mounted by first cutting teak stringers to fit the inside of the table bottom, then they are screwed to the cockpit floor. On my boat some of the screws were augmented with SS machine screws. Then the table is lowered over the wood and screwed into the wood, cosmetic teak is lastly applied. When I got the table partly lifted this spring the wood was 65% rotten. I knew this would be a project with some down time, so I just 101 it back in place this I had more time to work on this.

The second reason is that I found myself tripping over the table while single sailing, My big feed would get stuck in between the table bottom and the locker walls. The after sailing on Gene's Dream Catcher this June it pretty much sealed the tables fate.

Ok what I found last night after completely removing the table, steering cable and remaining wood; The wood was still damp even with it being a very dry fall. Most of the rotten wood was best described as mud like. I think I'm lucky in the fact that my cockpit floor still appears to be ok, I get no spring on mushiness . It looked like someone attempted a 1/2 bAss repair at one time with the machine screws, they were only on the stbd and forward piece of wood. I then cleaned the floor and removed all the old sealant. I dabbed some new sealant on the holes to keep the water out until we get back into glassing weather. There is a 11" in diameter raised boss in the cockpit floor ready to accept the new pedestal. It does look a bit weird with this area of virgin gelcote in the center of my cockpit.

So with this all said, I recommend that if you have this table setup pay special attention to it. I don't believe that it would be hard to just replace the wood if you wanted to keep the table.

This is what remained of the teak stringers under the table notice the screw used to attach it to the cockpit floor.

In this grouping you can see I have removed the table and cleaned the floor. I smeared some marine silicone on the holes till it is warm enough to fiberglass them. More to come!

This is the finished project less my chart plotter ( Gamin 176), and cleaning up.

I ran 1/2 inch PVC water pipe as wire conduit. The panel in this photo is NMEA feeds in and out from the GPS.