Swim platform repairs

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cmariner32

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I need to redo the swim platform on my 85 Carver Mariner. Where the support braces attach to the outside edge, they are through bolted and after 24 yrs, water has apparently gotten into around the castle bolts. I plan on removing the bolts and either cutting a 2-3" rectangular hole on the top fiberglass layer, digging out the rotted coring and filling in the void with fiberglass-or using an allen wrench chucked into a drill and roto rootering the damaged coring and filling with a fiberglass and epoxy mixture. Then I started wondering if what is used to fill the void needs to be mechanically connected to the good coring in order to make a good structural repair. Am I over engineering this repair? There are 4-5 braces at the outside edge of the platform in varying degrees of water intrusion. Any and all dvice is appreciated.
 
can you remove the swim platform from the boat? if so invert the platform and cut away the glass from the bottom over any areas where the core is bad. remove the bad coring materials and replace it with foam core. then glass it in and seal with gelcoat.
 
If you can remove it and cut out holes on the bottom like vic suggested, I'd be inclined to fill the holes with epoxy and fibreglass strands to eliminate potential water intrusion damage.
 
I can't remove the platform. The repairs have to be done at the dock. I've already filled in some holes where I removed the old top mount ladder and it doesn't look all that noticeable. I was thinking of cutting the squares out, doing the repair and then putting the squares back in so that I would just have the edges to seal and match. Isn't that do-able?
 
That is doable. You just have to sure that your repair transfers the loads throughout the platform and not just to the small repair areas. Dont want the supports breaking thru the platform.

is the underside fibreglass in good shape? Not a lot of cracking?
 
The underside looks to be a mix of woven roving and chopped glass with a thin coat of fiberglass-similar to what you see on the inside of a hull. I made a repair several years ago of about a square foot of coring by cutting out the section underneath, putting in some marine ply and glassing it back up. Not real good looking but functional. Trying to do fiberglass repairs upside down is no picnic. Most of the underside looks to be OK otherwise. Any tips on tying the new coringfiberglass to the old to distribute the load?
 
Just need to go as big as possible and then make sure it is set in a good bath of resin. It will be a secondary bond so it wont be as strong as original, but with good adhesion, it should hold up. You might want to add another layer of fiberglass to the inside of the bottom of the platform if possible.
 
Thanks for all the great insight guys - my 86 mariner wasn't quite as bad as this so I was lucky enough to just remove, clean and replace/reseat with new SS parts - but in anothre year or so I'll be pulling out these notes to help with more repairs -
 
Ditto on what ecmark said. I'll be tackling this project in the upcoming weeks. I am taking the boat into the boatyard next week to have my 4 yr. old gast tank removed and a leak repaired. Fortunately, the yard will take some responsiblity if it turns out the failure was due to improper installation.
 
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