Cabin window implodes!

On Thursday, July 11, as Frances was washing her breakfast dishes in the galley, one of the two sliding glass windows on the starboard side of the boat disintegrated with a crash.  Frances said it sounded like the window was "hit with an AK-47."

Bill was at home working and this photo and several others were taken by a dock mate. That was very handy since when Frances called to relate what had happened, she also emailed the photographs.

Frances spent a lot of time cleaning up the glass and when Bill arrived on Friday morning, we finished with a Shop Vac. There was a lot of glass from that approximately 22" x 25" pane and this photo doesn't include a whole hell of a lot more that was sucked up by the Shop Vac.

We cancelled our planned cruise to Long Island and set about creating a temporary plywood patch.

Pretty classy, huh? At least it keeps the rain out.

We got some references to local glass companies from the folks on A-dock. We eventually selected Ruby Glass in New London and visited them on Friday afternoon. They will come to the boat on Monday morning and get an exact measurement and provide an estimate for the replacement glass. Unfortunately, this is 1/4-inch thick tempered, tinted glass so it's not something that they will have in stock. They estimate 7 to 10 days to get a replacement.

Even with all the things we have done to this old Silverton, we have never removed those windows so we put out a call for information on the Silverton Owner's Club website. By Friday morning, we had our first answer: yes, the windows can be removed by pushing the window up into the upper track and then pulling it out over the top of the lower track.

We didn't have to remove the broken window because there wasn't much left of it. When we get a replacement, we will have to remove the other long section of sliding glass because it is installed outside of the broken one.

Not to beat a dead window too much, but it is useful to explain that this window doesn't have a frame but it does seat in a vertical section of aluminum that has a lock.

There was lots of broken glass embedded in the channel and on Saturday, we used a small punch and a hammer to knock all of the fragments out. That left a large quantity of what appeared to be silicone sealant in the channel. To get that out we forced lengths of paper towel into the channel and soaked it with Goo Gone. (It's amazing what Frances has "in stock" on the boat.)

After four or five applications, the Goo Gone cleaned out all the old silicone. We applied that blue painter's tape to the window channel so all this abuse wouldn't damage the black finish.

Over the next day or so, just about everyone on the dock came for a look and a number of people offered suggestions as to why the window imploded. There was certainly an undercurrent of "why did a window break on your boat (and not on mine)?"

We really don't know. The first guess was lightening but while there was storm, it had passed by the time with window let go. There was no lightening damage of any kind to the boat.

Someone suggested pressure on the glass from the weight of the cabin roof and fly bridge but the remaining three sliding windows operated freely and certainly weren't under pressure.

Also discussed was a strike by a BB gun from across the fairway. We guess that's possible but to hit our window, the angle would probably just cause a BB to just bounce off. There was a 34-ft. SeaRay in the next slip so making that shot with a BB gun would be very difficult.

One dockmate offered a really thoughtful guess and he's one of those people who really knows boats (ex-Navy and now a diesel engine technician), so we thought his idea sounded at least, likely.

His theory boiled down to temperature or humidity difference between the inside and outside of the boat. Frances likes the boat cool and keeps the AC set at 75 degrees. That means that there could have been as much as a 20 degree difference in temperature between the outside and inside surfaces of the glass when it broke. It is 33 year old glass. Maybe that section of glass just couldn't take it.

Perhaps it was humidity, although we are over our heads knowledge-wise here. The outside humidity when the window broke was probably 90+ percent. Inside the boat?  Who knows, but it is really dry. Maybe that's another possibility.

I guess we'll never really know. We didn't waste the rest of our weekend, though. We washed most of the boat, re-sealed our new hatch (two small leaks appeared since we installed it) and mounted a new bracket to hold our flag.

Hopefully, we'll head out next weekend for Long Island. If you spot a Silverton 34C with a 1960's woody station wagon look, that will be us.