Team Seacats

Neville Cork recently purchased a relatively new, privately constructed, A-cat and after reviewing in detail, we saw a couple of areas that needed some attention.  While Neville is working diligently to try and have the boat refinished by the Spring Fever Regatta, I helped him reinforce the area where the rear beam is bonded to the hull.  Both hulls showed cracking in this area and it needed some reinforcement.  We certainly don’t want to see the glued beam separate from the hull!

Recalling some construction reinforcements on some of the newer A-cats, I knew how we needed to repair and reinforce this area where the beam meets the inside of each hull.  We simply made a carbon fiber strap.  by drilling a couple of holes in the hull at a point nearly tangent with the inside wall, I took a bundle of carbon fiber roving, with the ends taped to keep them tidy through the holes, wetted it with epoxy, and strapped it around the beam and inside the boat.  Once the carbon was in place, we cut the tape from the ends of the bundles and fanned them out gluing them to the inside of the hull creating a lot of bonding surface area.  We then tidied up the upper portion and voila!  A carbon beam strap.  the amount of carbon used here was more about getting enough bonding surface area inside the hull – there’s much MORE than enough carbon here for the strength needed…in fact, the amount of carbon in each strap should be good for about 30,000 lbs of tension!