[Jack Aperio]

Just finished replacing the forward deck on my 1995 4000 Express. I had noticed a small soft spot to the left of my anchor deck switches at the end of last summer. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that water had seeped into the core around my windlass, deck switches, and hawse pipe. I have had the boat for over 13 years and had no idea this was happening. No leaks were apparent anywhere. It still amazes me how severe the damage was. What we estimated to be a one week repair ended up taking over three. I guess the lesson here is don’t assume the bedding on your deck hardware will last forever.

The repair consisted of removing all deck hardware, removing the deck and core, bonding in a new 1 inch plywood core, grind, fiberglass layup, sand and faring deck, painting, and Awlgrip Griptex which was a much easier option than trying to match the original non-skid. A pretty expensive lesson learned that I thought I would share.