Bow Rail

My daughter, Angelina, and I worked on the bow rail today. I worked on this for two reasons. 1) The bow had too much flex when pulled on and I wanted to stiffen it up. 2) Rain water gets into the boat when the bow is not covered, so I wanted to re-caulk the posts.

I found 1"X 3" PVC boards at Home Depot. I cut the PVC boards to used as backing boards. Due to the thickness, I bored a hole to sink the locking nut. Even after sinking the nut the bolts were not long enough. I ended up making a mess and not installing the backing boards. I lot of swearing went on. I will need to purchase longer 1-1/2" - 2" instead of the 3/4" stock bolts.

I also tried using white roofing caulk instead of the marine caulk. I am interested to see how this works.