I apologize for the poor quality of this picture which I took with my new Kodak ZI8 camera of which you will hear more of later but at least you can see that this a hull to deck joint that has come apart. This joint is of a well know volume builder's 23 foot sport fishing boat. The boat was in a collision which damaged the hull but what is important is what was in fact holding the two parts together.
What you are seeing is two very small beads of caulking, probably 5200 above which is a hole left by the self tapping screws under the rub rail. That's it! On most of the boat there was so little caulk that it did not even seal the gap between the two parts of the boat and the occasional screws were so inadequate and close to the edge of the laminate that they offered no mechanical strength at all. When you consider that this boat was powered by a couple of 225 hp outboards it's amazing that the deck did not just pop off the first time that the boat hit a wave.
There is nothing wrong with using 3m 5200 as an adhesive, it's marvelous stuff but you have to have enough of it, two small beads like this just won't cut it.
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