Re: What am I about to get myself into?
Re: What am I about to get myself into?
It sound like you have made up your mind with this boat. I can better answer your title question now; you got into a lot of work. Also, I don’t see the center console you talked about in you op. Is this a different boat? The boat I see in the pictures looks to me to be an open bow tri-hull, not a runabout, but I might be wrong.
Try to find the coast guard plate. It will tell you how big the vessel is, maximum horse power, maximum load in amount of people and weight, and the total load weight adding motor, people and all the other stuff you put in the boat (anchor, seats, ice chest, etc…). There are formulas to calculate the above numbers if that plate is missing. That plate is generally riveted in a visible area inside the boat. I did a search for your boat maker and did not find much info so I cannot tell you precisely but by the photos I saw I got the feeling that the plate will be in the left side of the helm. If you can’t find it, (some old boats don’t have it) then look for he HIN. With the HIN you can go to a website and find some of that information. I can’t find the link now but I'm sure someone will chime in with it. The HIN is located in the starboard side of the transom, outside of the boat. Woodson use WDN as the first 3 letters of the number. This HIN should be in your bill of sales and probably in your registration papers if you live in a registration state. That will give you and us some references.
Let me give you a few pointers and some of the other members will surely follow.
Gunwale crack – Never seen a boat that a gunwale will crack like that under a person weight. If anyone has seen this before please keep me straight. Possible something really heavy was put there or something struck it. You should be able to fix the crack and replace the wood. Also, I would call that the upper deck, not gunwale.
Deck – you will probably have to replace the entire deck and the stringers. Usually when one is gone the other one is also, you will have to use a circular saw to cut the deck out, fiberglass and wood at the same time. After you get that out you should be able to see if the stringers are good or not and the state of your floatation foam. IF the foam is soaked in water it will make your boat very heavy and will promote rot in your deck and stringers. If your foam is soaked it needs out.
Transom – If there is a crack, there is a chance the water got into the wood. If the stringers are rotted there is another reason to take a close look at the transom. One way to check for rot is to hit the transom with a rubber mallet. For me is hard to explain but good wood and rotted wood don’t sound the same. Good wood will sound crisp while rotted wood will sound muffled, thud instead of tad… Man, did I confuse you now! LOL! The only definite way to know if you have rot in the transom will be to cut the fiberglass layer of the inside of the transom, remove it and do an ocular inspection. This is not a light decision. If anyone has more or better advice there I will appreciate it. I have the feeling that having a motor and a transducer “professionally” installed will cost you more than $200, if anyone has done this please chime in, I done all my work myself. If you are capable of doing this restoration there is no reason why mounting the motor should be a problem for you and I would advise you to do it yourself.
Bottom paint – Before you do any painting below the water line you need to decide if the boat will be hauled by trailer to the boating area or will it stay in water most of the time if not all the time. If the boat will stay in the water for the most time you will have to use paint designed for boats that stay in the water all the time, regular paint will not work. If the boat will be in and out the water then your options for paint are wider and the prices will be more forgiving.
If you want to roll your boat you might want to do that after taking the upper deck off. That way it will be a bit lighter. Also if you have to do any repairs, like the one in your “gunwale” (upper deck) is better to do them from the inside (fiberglass) of the boat instead of the outside (gel coat). To take your upper deck off you will have to remove the rub rail and any nail-screw-staple-rivet keeping the upper deck attached to the hull then pull it apart from the hull.
I also see that you are planning to have somewhere around 4 adults and 2 kids or 5 adults in the boat. That might be a bit too much weight for that boat. Actually, it might even be illegal. I have a similar boat. The max capacity is 4 adults or 800 pounds. I have a 50 hp motor on it and the max hp I can have is a 85hp. When I have 2 adults on it I can go as fast as 27 mph when WOT (wide open throttle) when I have 2 adults and 2 teens on it, less than 600 pounds the boat crawls to 10 miles an hour at wot. Both setups include the ice chest with food and the other common things I take on a trip. What I am trying to say is, just because you have space to sit so many people it does not means you can do that. In average, to have that many people in a boat you might have to be looking at 18 footers and larger boats with 120 hp min.
It will be good to share where are you located and where do you intend to use the boat and what type of use (fishing, cruising, skiing, etc…) as these might have an effect on how will you go around your restoration. I'm afraid you will be close to 1K in just repairing everything I have gone over. Add the price of the motor and you will surely be very close, if not over the 1.5 k. However, like tashadaddy said, the sense of accomplishment that you will get after done is impossible to describe. Also, if you do the repairs right you will have a boat for years to come.
Good luck, we will be here to help.
I can't be held responsible for that LOL. But it sounds like you will need 2 hoists, and 2 anchor spots on the overhead beams to hook the hoists to, one to lift one end of the hull and the other to lift the other end of the hull. I have no earthly idea how willing he would be to help but QC the man that started that thread I mentioned earlier in this post, I would say e-mail him through his aviator and ask for more details. Or bump/start your own post in that thread "what size beam" up under non boating technical topics and see if these guys can give you some advice. Or start you a new thread all together in that area of the forum to get some help from the guys.
