Lavezzi 40: Lavezzi front salon windows

[lyleh]

Sailing upwind in a seaway with the new to me 2009 Lavezzi I noticed a small amount of water coming in under the main curved salon window at the front. When I investigated further I was surprised to see daylight on the bottom of the window between the window and the window frame in part of the curved area. There is a foam seal in between but it seems the window has pulled slightly away to create a gap. Any Lavezzi owners come across this and how did you fix it? Thanks in advance.

[Rapanui]

The same thing happened on our Athena. My soulution was to gouge out the existing foam bond to a reasonable depth, clean it, prime it and to fill with a one part polyurathene sealant similar to Sikaflex. You could also use a glazng silicone such as Dow 799 which is what I used to fit new acrylics to my Goiot deck hatches, which may be better as it is more UV resistant.
The problem is that the OEM adhesive foam is not UV resistant and after a while the foam tape breaks down. You will notice that under the eyebrows , the top of the window is fine. On the Athena, FP painted the window edge black, I guess partly for appearance, and partly to stop UV, but that wears off in time.

[lyleh]

Thanks. I will try that. What did you use to get the sikaflex into the gap between the window and the frame? I was thinking a syringe might be the best.

[Rapanui]

Mask up the GRP surround and the acrylic with masking tape. If you cut the Sikaflex noxzle at an angle and hold the cut face of the nozzle normal to the acrylic and hard against the masked GRP frame and pump the mastic gun it should fill Sikaflex into the cavity. I find keeping the gun still, fill, then move just enough to fill adjacent without leaving voids. Finish off with putty knife or similar using GRP frame as a guide to make it neat. Remove masking tape before the Sikaflex fully cures

[lyleh]

Great. Thanks

[chrisspeth]

Hi, we had the same problem on our Lavezzi 2 years ago.
What is happening is that due to the huge size of the window the difference in thermal growth between the fiberglass and the Acrylic window when heated up works away the Sicaflex which is used to glue the window on.
The foam rubber is just a seal towards the inside of the saloon to give a nice clean edge.
The only solutiuon to this is to cut out the window completely, clean and prime the window as well as the gluing edge on the cutout, and add a new 8-10mm thick self adhesive foamed rubber gasket around the window cutout onto the fiberglass.
around that rubber gasket you have to make a bead of ca 20x20mm of Sicaflex 295UV and place the window with the help of 8 4x40mm woodscrews through the existing mounting holes in the window.
You need to be careful to not compress the rubber band to smaller then 8mm, because you will need to have this thickness off bead remaining to leave enough play to compensate the different thermal behavior of the materials.
We achieved that by using some 8mm spacers on the edge.

Our repair was done in April 2021, and we have sailed some 5000nm since then without any problems.
It is a lot of work (it took the two of us nearly a week to do it), but it is looking exactly as before....and now I can trust the gluing of the window and can be sure that it does not fall off in case of a big movement of the boat in big waves
The Starbord window is less critical because it is smaller, but to feel safe I plan to redo the glue on this also in the next winter break....
cheers Chris