Hold riveted sections in rafts with spot marker (8)
I believe the answer is:
transfix
'hold' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'riveted sections in rafts with spot marker' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'spot' could be 'fix' (both can mean a difficult or tricky situation) and 'fix' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'trans' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for transfix that I've seen before include "Make motionless with horror" , "Pierce with a sharp point" , "Paralyse with sudden emotion" , "Stun in horror - run through" , "Pierce; make motionless" .)