Side decks on Miss Kathleen are wood cored – at least in the area of the stanchions. Revamped a stanchion base earlier this year by removing wet wood and filling the area with epoxy.

Shocking that the holes for the stanchion base are not pre-filled with epoxy for sealing. The original builders just drilled holes through the deck and used silicon as a sealant.

Cheers

Dennis

Same here. All my side decks are balsa cored. Also redid all my stanchion bases and none were done properly; all bedded with silicone and many, especially the ones next to the lifeline gates, were leaking and the core wet or rotten. Fortunately not too far for most of them but still a bit of a pain.

While I was at it I replaced the little fiberglass backing pads with larger backing plates of stainless.

The worst as I mentioned were the stanchions next to the lifeline gates. The wet and rotted areas were odd shaped, like a Rorschach inkblot, so deeper in one direction than the other at the same base.

Several I had to route out the entire area between the four bolt holes in the deck. To the sides the worst case a couple of channels that went maybe 3 inches or a bit more up under the deck. Most only about an inch.

I also left the holes open for a few weeks to let any remaining moisture evaporate. Covered the holes on the deck and left them open on the underside. Fortunately I had pretty good access to underside on all of them but may be different on the 424 (I have the 422).

One area that was really bad I drilled a few access holes a few inches away from the base from the underside and taped a vacuum cleaner hose to the holes and let it suck dry air through for a while. Then put a space heater (on low) under it for a while to make sure.

I think it solved the problems but ask me about it in a few years.