hi all, had skipped this thread as the title didn't grab me

choloemac, do some searches on this forum for; nacra 5.2, deck removal and also look for posts by airborne and gree

your 5.2 is, like theirs and mine, solid glass, as jake says no glass there

sounds like your problem is forward hull stringer de-lamination and you'll need to lift off the forward decks with chisel and putty knife to re-bond the stringers on and add bulkheads to prevent them coming off again

the hulls are build of woven glass cloth and the stringers were made of random chop glass laid over cardboard tube formers. state of the art in it's day but in retrospect the chopped mat glass was a bad choice as it's heavier for less strength than woven glass and wasn't bonded well enough

given 30 years of banging and flexing the stringers sound like they have twisted free of the hulls. if i remember rightly the rigging you have is from airborne's 5.2 after the port hull snapped off forward of the beam and torpedoed the starboard hull. airborne says that there was dirt in the glass where the stringers should have been laminated meaning they must have been loose for some time and without them the huge length of unsupported hull twisted off in waves with 2 on traps

think gree ended up with the starboard hull and mast of that boat and used the hull to practice deck removal so he could do a cleaner job on his own 70's 5.2. pretty sure he's doing that work now...

i've been worried about my own solid glass 1982 5.2 as there is no way to see inside the forward half of the hull to check the stringer bonding. but with my hulls in the garden at the moment i've notice that in the morning ice has formed on the night's condensation in such a way as to show exactly where the stringers are bonded underneath. theoretically if the stringer had de-laminated from the hull this effect would be patchy........so i'm guessing that my gently used japanese 5.2 hasn't started de-laminating yet

will try to dig up the other threads

eric e