The usual cause of water intrusion to this area is leakage through the rectangular plate which slips over the chainplate from the outer deck side and is held in place with 4 screws. These plates should be removed every couple of years and re-bedded to keep moisture out of the slot where the chainplate passes through the deck.

Where damage has occurred, it is usually made obvious by brown streaks from the glassed over area inside the hull where the freezing of trapped water or expansion of the wood has fractured the fibreglass. The brown streaks are from the deterioration of the wood core. The water then drains out along the inside of the hull. Clearly, if the wooden knee has deteriorated the strength of the mounting is compromised with potentially serious consequences, and they will need to be replaced. Perry Basden recently recommended that if fitting new knees, the position of the new blocking should be moved slightly, and then glassed in so that it is possible to attach the chainplate to the outside of the blocking in it's original position, rather than hiding it under the fibreglass. This way, any future water intrusion around the chainplate slot should not damage the wood blocking and future repairs will probably be unnecessary.

Although the actual method of attachment of the chainplates to the knees varies depending on the Aloha model and the age of boat, the principles for removing the existing mounting and glassing in a replacement is the same. Tom Schraeder, owner of Sonset, possibly the first Aloha 28 (8.5) sold, recently undertook this task and was kind enough to capture the photos that appear below (click on the images to enlarge) with his description of each stage.

	Shows the area before the start of work. I believe the failure occurred because the initial holes for the stanchion actually conflicted with the knee position. Sonset was probably the first A28 (8.5) sold and it looks as if they were still working out a few kinks.
	Shows a section of the fibreglass opened up. By this point it was clear that the whole enclosure and the wood would need to go.
	Several hours of Dremel and grinder work later. The liner was cut away to get access to the original tabbing. I decided to leave some of the thickness of the original tabbing intact. It was an excellent guide to get the replacement knee in exactly the correct alignment, and I hated grinding down the thickness of the hull.
	Shows the glassed in knee. I had great ideas of taking more in process shots, but the mess of working with epoxy and glass didn't go well with handling a digital camera.
	I used West System materials. First an initial painting of straight epoxy on the hull and knee surfaces. Then thickened fillet material to ease the inside curves of the glass. Five layers - cloth, mat, cloth, mat, cloth. The hard part is trying to get the cloth or mat to lay flat down at the bottom, where the curves of the sides and bottom leave a lot of excess material. More thickened epoxy was added to TRY to smooth some of the odd edges and shapes. The thickened epoxy is the light pink stuff. A final batch of epoxy was used to reset the cut away liner panels.
	After the epoxy had cured for several days I ground down a couple of rough edges, cleaned up the enclosure, and gave it a coat of paint to match the original colour.
	I hope this can be of help to anyone thinking about similar work. It's not quite as pretty as the original work, but I believe it will outlast me.

Last updated  12 January, 2006 - © Aloha Owners Association