When I purchased my Farr 727 Lion Passant, she had a separated and cracked floor grid and a survey report stating that this was not a structural issue. I have come to the opinion that the floor grid is necessary to spread the side loads from the keel. While I have sailed the boat for more than a year as is, Bruce Farr designed the boat to have wood frames to spread this load. (See photo of part of the plans).
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The keel is attached through bolts that are in turn bolted to frames
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The Northstar version used a floor pan tabbed with a single layer of woven roving to the hull. On Lion, this roving tabbing had sheared and separated in almost all the 5 box divisions of the floor. See the following photos from when I bought the boat.
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Keel attachment - 2 keel blots and a reinforced 1 by 8 stringer. Note sheered tabbing around floor pan that someone has filled with a putty
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Cracked floor pan
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I bought epoxy and fiberglass cloth to effect this repair and began work last week. Tomorrow I hope to finish painting the repaired floors. Here is my work to date in photos:
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Getting started. I have used an angle grinder and oscillating muti-tool to cut and grind away the old tabbing and make things ready for new fiberglass and epoxy tabbing.
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This shows a single prepared box in the floor pan
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The farthest aft box was only damaged on 3 sides
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An area around the crack in the center cross piece was ground back around the crack
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Similarly on the starboard side
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The front three boxes have been tabbed with at least 4 layers of heavy cloth
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Detail of one grid box
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The aft box required much less area to be glassed but I used the same layup
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| The cross piece repair required mushroom shaped glass pieces and L shaped pieces and needed at least 6 to 8 layers. |
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Back at home I primed and painted the floor hatch boards
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Here is the completed tabbing taped off and ready for priming
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And here is the primed floor. I will finish the painting in the next couple of days with another coat of primer and at least one of Interlux one part polyurethane
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