E27 Traveler cabin top mounting woes
Dave,
Before you go nuts with the grinder....
Are the cracks in the gel coat only or down to the glass?
Is that the stock location for the traveler on the 27 or a modification?
When you say
"The roof is void of core material here" do you mean that it rotted away or was never there?
All of these are important questions because if the 27 was not engineered to have the traveler on the cabin top then you may want to consider putting it back where it belongs. The main sail traveler is a pretty serious load to just place anywhere on the boat that looks good! Especially if that location has no core material or reinforcements that were engineered to handle that load. Like over-tightening your standing rigging, a traveler located in the wrong place can cause your deck (or entire hull) to flex in ways that it was not designed to. If that is where it is supposed to go (or that's where you want it anyway) I would suggest that you remove the liner from the inside to gain access to the void between the liner and deck. Once that area is open I would epoxy in large pieces of marine plywood building up to a thickness to fill the void. Then epoxy the liner piece (if it's a hard liner) back in place. This accomplishes a couple of things. Oversized plywood backing will spread the load over the deck and any deck flexing that does occur under load will not be concentrated on a couple of washers. Also when you work from the inside the boat any cutting and patching that you do will be in the cabin and hidden over head as opposed to on the deck for all to see. You will have a better chance to fixes those deck cracks by grinding with a Dremmel and making a small cosmetic repair with gel coat.
All that being said, Chaco is 100% correct on the West System manuals. You may even be able to download them from the West System web site. There are also other epoxy companies out there like MAS, System Three and Progressive Epoxy Polymers on line at
www.epoxyproducts.com. I’m not affiliated with any one of these companies. You can also find stuff on E-bay, search for “marine epoxy”
Needless to say. Find a good source that you can afford. You will be addicted to the stuff once you work with it.
Good luck.
Mike T