[Public-List] Large ports in cabin

[Hugh McCormack]

Good morning Mike,

 

I may be misunderstanding your comment but our boat (#39) has aluminum frames around all of the ports (large and small).  Purhaps the rubber gaskets were only used in the very early boats.  Our frames appear to be original to the boat and a standard size.  They are through bolted through the cabin side fibreglass and finished on the inside with acorn nuts.  There is some kind of flexible sealant under the frames (I'll find out what when I replace my ports next spriing) that was dried out when I bought the boat but seems to have absorbed moisture and re-sealed itself since.

 

With regards to the actual plexiglass replacement I suspect that each individual port will have to be cut to match its opening.  I spent a year working for Vandestadt & MacGruer when I was in university.  While we used templates to mark outlines for port openings in the fibreglass and, also, for cutting the plexiglass ports, the actual cutting was neither exact nor identical from one boat to the next.  The rubber gaskets were able to handle the differences but I would not have trusted even the best fit ports to stand up to a serious impact.  In the case of our Albergs, I would imagine that Whitby followed the same construction process and used the flexible sealant to fill the gaps.  The bolted frames would provide much more strength that the rubber gasket.

 

Cheers,

 

Hugh Mcormack

Woody Point, NL
 
> 
> The early boats all had rubber gaskets on the main ports and the smaller ones too. Probably the best solution would be to make aluminum frames for inside and outside and thru bolt the making a sandwich with the plexiglass. This is one place, the only place, where I think it is appropriate to use clear silicon. It would be best to have a frame to make a template, short of that, once the windows were removed, you could trace the inside of the hole and make a frame template from there. Maybe someone on list has a frame they could trace and send you the drawing.
> 
> 
> Mike Lehman 
 		 	   		  
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