VERY bad adventure with 470e

We lost the port side master cabin window, have a look at the photo's I posted and tell me if it's similar.  Sikaflex seemed to fail allowing the windows to part with the hull, we lost ours in the Irish Sea at around 0100.  We've had all ours replaced at Hanse's expense and they are now bolted in.

How old is your 470 if less than 10 years I suggest you mention fit for purpose and duty of care although your rules in Italy may be different to ours.

All I'll say is that we too think the boat is well worth every effort to keep the like a child and we had every help we could from our dealer here in the UK Inspiration Marine, you need to get in touch with your dealer and bang on doors.

So in short the failure is due to an outside product and not the fault of the boat it self. similar to a tyre blowing on your expensive car.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

I think the short answer is that Hanse and most of the other main stream builders are reacting to buyers wants by putting in hull windows and for that matter a large number of deck hatches. So I don't think we can blame Hanse for reacting to buyer wants.

 

It is a shame various owners have had problems with their windows which in some cases the failures have caused a lot of interior damage and potentially could have resulted in the lose of a boat and possibly lives as well. But putting it into perspective - the sika window direct bonding system (or similar) is used in most cars, building and both sail and power vessels generally without problems. I worked at a ship yard where all windows were direct bonded using Sika products and over 25 years they had not had a failure. The oppose was more the problem - if a window needed to be removed it had to be smashed and the remainder chiselled out. Most of these vessels were large 40 to 125 meter high speed (40kn+) commercial vessels which often operated in adverse conditions, 350 days at year and up to 14 hours a day. I have to admit all these windows were toughened safety GLASS. Sp putting all into perspective correctly fitted hull windows should not be a safety concern - if you are that worried owners should glass their hull windows in. Personally I am more concerned about the lack of water tight bulkhead, the lack of a engine room fire smothering system, lack of fire barrier around the engine room and the lack of emergency exits from the aft cabins. Have these things stop me buying a fibreglass production boat - no. They are what they are.

 

I was shown a friends 470e windows which were suffering from the Sika problem and it was fairly obvious that the windows showed some areas where the Sika had failed. So if anyone is concerned they should inspect the windows or have their dealer do the inspection. I think Panos has a Youtube video on the forum which shows the problem windows on his 630e before they were fixed.

 

Lastly, my friends 470e had his windows replaced at no cost by Windcraft in Australia when the boat was about 5 years out of warranty. So it seems to again boil down to how good your dealer is - the good ones will get the fix done without cost to you while the other dealers will drag their heels and want to be paid. I often see on the forum both Inspiration Marine and Windcraft are recommended as being some of the best of the dealers. Maybe we should hear from other forum members about who the good dealers are.