SeaSport Repair

[Fuzz]

So some time back I spoke about my little encounter with a rock in Prince William Sound. I thought I would show what I have been doing with the boat since. My first problem was getting two estimates for repairs so that could be summited to my insurance. Turns out it took me two months to find two places that would even give me a estimate. The estimates came in high enough that I am surprised the boat was not a total. Neither one of the repair places could get to the job for at least a year so I decided to do the job myself.
First thing was to see how bad the damage was. This is what it looked like.

As you can see I thought it best to cut the damage out and start over.

[Fuzz]

And here you can see both the balsa core and the extent of the de-lamination caused by the impact.
The good news for me at the time was even with the damage the glass held together enough to keep the leak rate down low enough my bilge pump could keep up.

[cape man]

OUCH!!!

[fallguy1000]

Please tell me u r getting rid of the balsa core.

[Fuzz]

Please tell me u r getting rid of the balsa core.

Balsa core is one of those things that can be up for debate. Done right and kept dry it is great. Do it wrong or let it get wet and it is the death of the hull. In this case it was done right and was dry after 37 years. For the repair no balsa was used.

Boat was lifted off the trailer and made ready to work on

And then the damaged area was cut out.

[Fuzz]

I skipped over removing the motors and bracket. The motors were pretty straight forward but the bracket was a bear. I used 5200 when installing the bracket and man does that stuff hold on. After removing the 15 bolts that held the bracket on I thought the bracket would fall off. Not so much. I could lift the whole stern off the trailer with nothing but the 5200 holding it on. When it did give and come lose it took gelcoat and a little glass with it.

[Jaysen]

Yeah. Brute force is bad for that stuff. Use a piano wire to cut it loose when you can. Reduces the tear out damage.

[Fuzz]

I sort of know that but the old roughneck in me came out. You know either it will come or it will come into

[Fuzz]

Next move was to wax up some hard board and screw it to the hull bottom, after a ton or grinding, for a mold to work off of.

You can see where the 5200 took some glass with it when the bracket came off. The transom was ripped so I had to fix it a little differently.

[Fuzz]

Looking down on the repair. My buddy was helping me and he could not work with epoxy so I used vinylester resin. The color is because I used red catalyst. It makes it easy to do a good mix. This was the start of the lamination.