jib lead track

[Guest]

Cheers of the Season all:
The renovation of No.266, 'Heart's Ease' continues in the face of some brutal winter weather in the Hudson Valley.
I have been removing all the deck hardware in antiscipation of painting and some recoring in the spring. This boat has more than a few deck leaks however , the worst of the lot comes from the genoa track.
The bronze screws holding the track disappear into the deck...from inside
(the cabin) no bolts or backing plate can found...making them impossible to remove. Do these tracks have to be dug out with a crobar? I would like to restucture the gib track system to accomodate roller furling....I would hope to remove the original track without doing massive damage to the deck or interior. Ideas please.
Jim H

[Dave, 397]

I know this may sound stupid, but are you sure that they were thru-bolted in the first place?
I've pulled tracks off of several boats with balsa sandwich deck where the tracks had only been put down with wood screws! Sometimes there were a couple token thru-bolts at the ends, and the rest held down by screws, ook around the screws, and bedding compound.
Dave

[Jim H]

Bingo! That was my assumtion. The track is held to the deck with some very beefy bronze screws or bolts. When I try to remove them (or even tighten them), they turn and refuse to come out....which leads me to believe that the bolts and washers have been glassed over and may require WMD's to extricate them from the deck.
Jim H

[Dave, 397]

Have you tried some very gentle persuasion under the track with a pry bar while turning on the screws?

[David]

If you can get a sawsall blade under the track it will make quick work of the bolts/screws. In all probablilty you will be refinishing the side decks enough that any marks made by the sawsall will really not matter.

David

[Jim H]

Thanks all
The jury is in. Brute force is the way...saws-all, pry bar etc...I do hate to go from a mess to a big mess. I know with certainty the deck core under and around the track are saturated with water. On my boat, it seems that the side decks, port and starboard have the most problems with rotten cores...90% of the fore deck and coach roof are sound. Have these area been a common source of problems for other owns?
Thanks, Jim H