Re: Flotation foam
Lifting the deck is absolutely worth it on any boat over 15 yrs. old with any rot, there's no other way to know what lies below.
After lifting your deck core sample your foam, especially in the keel area. Cores samples between 16-24" apart will tell you if you have saturated foam. The foam can feel dry on top but be completely saturated half way down. If you have saturated foam the odds are high that you also have stringer rot or wet stringers that will never dry out and will rot in short order.
Stringers can appear to be in good shape on top and in certain places but have rot half way down or maybe just rotten or wet spots in them, it just depends on what stage they're in.
The majority of mass produced boats we see come through here have sloppy craftsmanship below deck with stringers being shoddily glassed in and we've seen a few that aren't even completely glassed just tabbed to the hull.
If you restore your boat, the quality of work that will be done will be far superior (even for a newb) to that done in the factory because you'll take the time to do it right and you'll care about what you're doing... and it won't be boat #99 on the assembly line for the day.
If you like working with your hands and don't mind getting dirty for a little while, boat restoring can be very rewarding... and even addictive! We've seen quite a few folks on here say they hope they never have to do this again at the beginning of their project only to see them buy another rotter/junk boat a few months later after they finish their project because the last project was so rewarding.
