Best adhesive for EVA foam decking?

Hi all,

I have a 2023 Solara S-250DC. Love the boat, but there are a few spots where the EVA decking is coming off, specifically on one of the bow hatches for the front boarding ladder and the port side swim platform on the transom. I know that a ton of people have had this issue and that's likely why they moved to the new snap-on decking in the newer models. Either way, what's the best way to fix it? Do I need to fully remove the pieces, scrape off the existing adhesive, and reapply? Or can I just put some new adhesive beneath the parts where it's peeling off? Any advice on approach and the best materials to use would be greatly appreciated.

Replace the failed pieces.

How to get the deck clean

How to put it back on

LOL - of course you have a video on this! Thanks Martin. Looks like quite a bit of elbow grease was involved. I wonder if I reach out to Fluid Motion if they can just send me the original dimensions for the two (small) pieces coming off or maybe they have some leftover EVA foam for those pieces from prior to the switch.

princecaspian said:

LOL - of course you have a video on this! Thanks Martin. Looks like quite a bit of elbow grease was involved. I wonder if I reach out to Fluid Motion if they can just send me the original dimensions for the two (small) pieces coming off or maybe they have some leftover EVA foam for those pieces from prior to the switch.

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Raptor decking would have the templates for your boat. Send them an email. They'll be able to send you back the drawings that you can confirm are the pieces you need. https://raptordeck.com/contact/

However... when I thought I only needed 1 or 2 pieces.. turns out, I needed all the pieces as they'd all failed (4 year old decking). So we pivoted to SeaDek, they had better designs, fish ruler, were willing to put our boat name into our decking, and just made the boat look even better. The way BlueSeasFab templates the SeaDek decking, I expect to get 7-10 years out of this EVA foam decking. The reason why is explained in this follow-up video.

There's a third video, that goes over everything you ever wanted to know about EVA foam decking.

princecaspian said:

LOL - of course you have a video on this! Thanks Martin. Looks like quite a bit of elbow grease was involved. I wonder if I reach out to Fluid Motion if they can just send me the original dimensions for the two (small) pieces coming off or maybe they have some leftover EVA foam for those pieces from prior to the switch.

Click to expand...

It's also not a lot of elbow grease. One of the big advantages of owning a small boat is there's less deck to clean.

I'd recommend taking this opportunity to get creative and make your boat "pop". 😎

Last year I purchased a used, low-hour 2022 Cutwater C24 with Raptor Deck on the cockpit and transom. Noticed that there were sections of Raptor coming up and I decided to re-glue. I ended up regluing about 50% of the decking. I first used 3M spray adhesive, but that was too messy with the masking and overspray, so I put down a light coating of Weldwood contact cement. That held for awhile but more sections started coming up and this year I decided to remove all the decking. I fish a lot and prefer to keep the cockpit uncovered. It took me about 5 minutes to pull all the Raptor decking up on the cockpit and transom. Here's were I saw the problem I created. 50% of the area was like that shown in the Channel Surfing videos... dirty sections with some of the residual original adhesive. The other 50% was the tenacious Wellwood. I say tenacious in how it sticks to the antiskid fiberglass, and not to the Raptor mat. On the original adhesive I used Citrus Strip paint striper. Brush on a coat. Let it sit about 30 minutes, then scrub it off with soapy water and a plastic scrub pad, or white or blue 3M Scotch-Brite pads. The original Raptor had, in my opinion, a poor peel-and-stick adhesive, and all the dirt and adhesive remnants came off easily. Most of the original adhesive was stuck on the mats. I suspect the adhesive, even with SeaDek, is not intended to be "permanent", since in this boat environment, the mats will be damaged, stained, or lift up, and need to be removed and replaced.

The Weldwood area is another issue. Multiple applications of Citrus Strip, plastic scrappers and pads, hours (days) of work finally cleaned up the mess.

My recommendation? Remove the Raptor Deck. Don't reglue, but if you do, don't use a strong contact adhesive like Weldwood. Maybe the 3M spray with masking tape and paper for overspray. It's all going to come off anyway. Even with a better quality SeaDek, it won't last. If you want to cover the antiskid, look at the new snap-on Seagrass Woven Vinyl mats Fluid Motion has been putting on their newer boats.