u/sdumetz

My mooring has no side dock to enter or exit the boat (as is typical in Dutch inland water marinas). So I need to access the boat from the bow or the stern.

The harbor is very shallow near the dock so I’m not even sure I could dock stern-to without risking the rudder hitting the bottom.

So I need to go above the tube, which is at least 10cm too high to be comfortable, each time I enter or exit the boat.

Security-wise I wouldn’t mind cutting the pulpit’s front tube entirely, but that would most probably require some structural reinforcement: it holds both sides together…

Would bending it down be an option? Anybody tried this kind of things?

The underwater paint of my boat (mallard 9m) is practically gone. In some areas you can even see the glass fiber through small (<5mm).

Should I even attempt to fix it?

The boatyard nearby told me they could sand it all down then 6 layers of epoxy and it would be good as new. Should I trust them or expect this to just hide the damage for a few years at best? That’d be half the boat’s value…