Bulkhead? to fasten or not to fasten.

Boat 22' cuddy I/O
I've finished gutting the beast of wet stuff. Windshield, engine and bowrails are about the only things not saturated. I am starting to put everything back together. Anyway, in it's original state, the cuddy bulkhead (wall) from the dash to the floor was glasses to the floor and screw bracket to the fore deck (dashboard) Ditto at the very front of the cuddy, the bulkhead is glassed to the floor and sides of the hull but on top to the deck. Also, I have some serious stress cracks on the dash, on the inside of the widshield. I am going to solve that by adding a a horizontal support under there and glassing that in. The cracks may have been caused by walking on the foredeck or flexing of the weakest area. Since my vertical (dash) corners at the gunnels are also cracked.
My Questions are:
1. Should I glass the new wall in, top, bottom and sides? and help support the dash/windshield area?
2. In order to stiffen the hull up a bit and mount my seat pedestal platforms, I thought I would add an outer stringer. Do I lay it on the strake or next to it or not at all ?? In this picture, I just have the outer right side one standing in place but, would that be a good place? See pink foam bed in for proposed portside stringer location.
3. do I join the two with a bulkhead or let them float lenghtwise?

Thanks for your input.
Eric H
Work in Process

 

The bulkheads you describe are probably structural and so I would want to glass them in as they were before.
Stress cracks aren't due to people walking on the deck.... decks are supposed to handle that. They're due to the deck structure not being built rigidly enough to handle people walking on the deck (or, in some cases, just the slamming loads of the deck itself as you go through waves). If the cracks are bad, the glass fibres inside are probably torn too.
It sounds like you're starting to plan a fair bit of structural reworking. Seeing as it doesn't look like your boat has much structure right now anyway, this could be a good thing, but I'd read up a bit on how stringer grids are designed before you rebuild yours.

 

Marchmat,
Thanks, you are right I don't have much left in the hull. As i said;
Neither wall in the cuddy was/is tabbed in to the upper deck. The one under the dash was attached to the upper deck with screws (4) and floor with "L" shaped steel backets (2). Pretty shoddy IMHO.
The door to the cuddy was on the left side and off center. I want to put it in the center and be able to step in the cuddy, rather then crawl (I'm to old to that).
I'm planning to tab the walls in left and right to the hull and floor and upper deck. I am going to use a foam trapezoid to the hull and top, so not to create a stress, hard spot or hinge pionts. Good idea or not?

as you can see from the pics, I'm ready to put it back together. I'd like to do a sea trail before 1st snowfall. Need some good thought on the outer stringer placement. Some one chime in and give me courage...

Eric H
Putting her back together