The toe rail project:

Synapsis: My toe rail leaked and  adding fuel to the removal argument, when I bought Colopa, the surveyor said that the 1 inch track that rested on it should not be used. When I finally removed the toe rail, the deck edge which is revealed at that point, showed where leaks in the deck fittings i.e. track, hand rails, chainplates, had let water enter into the deck and the  balsa core rotted in sections.  

Toe rail removal: 

1. first the inside teak had to be removed to get at the bolts and there are a lot of bolts. Every 4 inches for the track, and then when the track is removed every six inches holding the toe rail on.  Most of the bolts were frozen, and 20 % had to be drilled out.  Buying the largest screwdriver available helped.  I also inserted wooden wedges to separate the edge of head liner from the side of the boat.

2. I also made a cut out behind the sink other wise it's nearly impossible to get to the bolts, and totally impossible to remove the inside track.

2.  In reading the West System book (which I recommend reading) on making through deck fittings,  the idea is to drill a bigger hole than you plan on using for the fitting and then carving out the some of the deck core and then filling in with epoxy. Then you drill the smaller hole for your fitting and  if the fitting ever leaks, it won't seep into the deck AND the leak will appear at the origin AND at the the time of entry. Otherwise what had occurred in my case is  water leaked and entered the deck, found the lowest point,  proceeded to  rot the deck core, and then leaked into the boat at the toe rail.    For this reason I  decided to remove all the deck hardware on the boat and putting this theory into place.

See: http://www.westsystem.com/webpages/userinfo/manual/index.htm

Here is the idea:

Careful because any place there is a headliner, the yankee 30 deck layers look like this!!!!!!

In order to fill the holes up with epoxy I'd put duck tape on the underside and fill from the top:  At first without realizing I'd pour the epoxy --- and pour --- and pour -- and it would end up leaking inside wreaking epoxy havoc, having leaked through the air gap in between the deck bottom and headliner.

After I found out the problem, the idea was to not drill all the way through the second deck layer, fill the hole with epoxy and then drill all the way through.

Close up of the inside track filled with epoxy

 3.  Any epoxy spills MUST be cleaned up with acetone.  And the problem that I encountered is if you wipe epoxy it looks like it's gone. But then it dries and it looks like this. It is then impossible to clean.

Dealing with the core rot.

There are many options here's two.  

The first is total removal of the decks as done by George Fairlie:  link

The second  is a more partal job which is what I did:  link

Back to eggy's Yankee 30 page: