 |
|
|
|
|
|
Colin Mann
Poohsticks, J/92 #08
I don't know whether everyone has checked the backing the on the Harken 0544 swivel cam which the main sheet goes through, but if not, they should. I now see that it was mentioned briefly in one of the J/92 News so I guess I'm not the first to have the problem... however I'm not sure everyone knows about it.
Briefly, here is my story....
Shortly after I purchased my J/92 this year (hull #8), I was racing it in about 20 knots of wind. We were on an upwind leg and all of a sudden had ball bearings from the Harken 0544 swivel cam at the base of the mainsheet cleat under our feet in the cockpit. We jury rigged the mainsheet and finished the race. When I went to investigate why this had happened, I found that the swivel cam had pulled upward from the cockpit floor. Unfortunately, the underside of the swivel cam is hidden underneath the insulation inside the engine compartment and is therefore not easily inspected. When I did strip back the insulation, I found that the nuts on the back side of the swivel cam had pulled up through the inner skin and the core was wet and rotten! It turns out that there were only very small washers on the underside with no supplemental backing or reinforcement. I understand from J/Boats and TPI that there should have been much larger washers in place. I reamed out the rotten and wet core to a diameter of about 4 inches while leaving the outer skin and most of the inner skin intact. After drying it out, I then had a fiberglass specialist fill the area with a paste of resin and special filler which resembles ground fiberglass.
Once this set up, I redrilled it and for good measure backed it with a 5.5" square plate of 3/8" aluminum. A bit of metal heat-resistant tape helped to get the insulation back in place. The moral of the story is it is probably worth the few minutes and replacement metal tape it would take for everyone to pull back the insulation at the aft end of the engine compartment roof and check that their swivel cam is adequately reinforced! If it is not and has not yet pulled into the core, preventative measures would be much easier than the repair.