Re: floor rot
Ive got to throw what I did into the mix. My floor rotted too, and it was the last to go. When I got in there( actually, I discovered all this soon after buying the boat) the stringers were powder. Looked like leaves when I got it all out. I concluded that it was a damp jungle beneath the floor, a terrarium, with the moisture held in by the top layer of glass on the floor and open cell foam floatation. I harkened back to my first home built boat that had removable floor boards and no glass. The outside of the hull of that boat was glassed and there was a lot of rot, but the floors were good. I built it back that way on this "new " boat. I can take the floors out. I will eventually epoxy and glass the edges of the floor in(this year) because I think it needs the structural support of tying the sides together but on this boat it is structurally ok for the use I put the boat through, ...don't try this at home if any youngsters are reading. At any rate, I painted the bottom and top of the floor with a latex house paint(ref the Dave Carnell website) and primer and it is working fine so far(1 year). I also put ports in fwd and aft, port, stb, and center so I could air it out. I figgure the paint on the underside is even more important than the topside. The boat was built with no finish or barrier on the bottom side of the floor. The idea is that the latex paint resists water, but is permiable to allow the wood to dry out where as the fiberglass traps the water. <br /><br />For the stringers, the old ones were glassed in. I cut the tops off of the stringers, raked out the old rotton wood leaving standing, tall, fiberglass slots, and epoxied new wood stringers into the slots and screwed and epoxied the sides of the fiberglass slots to the sides of the stringers. This ties the hull to the wood stringers. Gotta say it is a solid ,cheap, and I bet lasting fix. The latex painted exposed tops of the stringers may allow the stringers to stay dry too. I calked all gaps between the top of the fiberglass slots and the wood stringer sides to prevent water from collecting in these gaps. <br /><br />Did I mention, it's not real pretty.
