The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

[KennethfromGA]

Editors Note,
I want to apologize in advance for three things,

1. Due to time and money issues my progress will be slow.

2. Due to the passage of time and some computer snafu's many of the pictures I had of the boat are missing. Should I run across them I may post them later on.

3. I am (the admiral assures me) both slow witted and long winded. I'm going to break up my posts some but this may still be way more novel-esque than is desirable Especially here in the beginning.
All that being said,

Back in 2004 my mom bought me two one dollar raffle tickets from a church fund raiser, the prize, a 1976 Chapparral fishing boat. More specifically this Chapparral tri-hull,

As you might imagine given that we are having this conversation, I won! The old girl came home with me and after buying a battery for sixty dollars (thirty times the price of the boat mind you) a trailer light kit, and some rattle can primer for the (ahem) "home-built" trailer. We were ready to go. I got the old Johnson to fire with the help of some ether and since she pee'd just fine I changed out the plugs and the gear oil and off to the lake I went. (Still the only paid vacation of my life.) After a week at the lake (including a memorable incident where I ran out of fuel and towed the boat back to shore while swimming with a rope around my waist as my brother's friend provided morale support from the helm. ) I knew two things,
1. I love my boat!
2. She really needed some work.
As a call center dweeb who wasn't making squat at the time the boat had to sit. (outside and uncovered cause hey, the wood deck is already rotten and the hull is fiberglass. In the spring of 05 I made a career change and became a long haul truck driver. Upside more money, downside no time, hence the boat sat for three more years. (still uncovered and outside) When I got a job as a local driver I thought I finally had it licked.....the admiral.....not so much! Finally in 2010 she changes her mind after spending a day at the lake in a borrowed boat. The garage gets cleaned out the boat gets moved inside and work commences. I get the old deck stripped out and a new one laid in before the admiral informs me she has a job. Sounds great right, more money means..... more boat money!.... Yeah not so much...her mom's daycare flops leaving me buying her a hundred bucks worth of gas every week for six months with a total return on investment of maybe eighty dollars pay to her. Halfway through this nightmare however a lot of prayers got answered and we found out that another "delay" would arrive in August. We named her Selena.

Thus expanding the number of deck hands to two.

The admiral's first and my best xbox buddy.

Now after lurking around here since January I'm finally going to get back at it. Fortunately the old girl has been inside for the last couple years so even though there is a ton of work to be done my list of woes hopefully isn't any longer. Lord willing and with a lot of help from my Iboats buddies me the wife and the kiddies will be out on the lake in no time.....err how about, sometime?

Hope this works as preview post and Opera mini don't appear to jive, either way I gotta roll now. At least two more posts coming this evening when I get home.

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Ok I lied here is one more before I go. Now that we've taken care of the back story here is a look at what I've got with the boat itself.
The interior when I got it was composed of Walmart's cheapest boat seats mounted on two fiberglass seat boxes that look to be out of a bass boat, a fiberglass console that looks like it was made as a replacement for a c/c, and a lot of rotten 1/2" plywood.

The cobbled together wiring worked on the trip but it had more corrosion on it than the promenade deck of the Titanic. After pulling the floor I realized the stringer was rotten.

This happened mainly because there was no fiberglass left on it just a few stray pieces here and there along the base.
At the time my plan was to get this old gal back in the water that summer so I "tried to remedy" the stringer by painting it with barn paint and bracing it with some extra lumber. (sorry this is one of the lost pics) After a little reading here I've confirmed what I pretty much knew then in so much as that "ain't gonna cut it". This of course means my new 3/4" ply deck (also painted on both sides with barn paint in order to prevent rot) has got to come back up.

I really feel bad for all of you who caught he!! getting your floors out as the screws the PO put in when he re-decked this bad boy in 2001 were so rotten when I pulled up the old floor that I had no trouble at all getting it up and out with a claw hammer despite his poly work on the seams. This second removal however will be much harder as I did the seams with between 2 to 4 layers of 4oz fiberglass cloth and marine epoxy (note that's not just a description that's it's brand name.) which I also used to cover the screw heads in order to seal them. Gotta give the epoxy credit, despite zero prep by it's incompetent installer there are very few places with air pockets. I haven't yet took a core sample of the transom as despite the long odds against it being anything other than mulch the tap test sounds good and when I bounce on the foot of the motor every thing feels rock solid. (I'm 265 btw) Hence forth I don't want to drill it till I have something to fill the holes with right after I find out it's golden.

The steering is now frozen and the steering wheel always looked a little too...not quite cool enough 70's kinda thing.

Like the guy who has a Maverick and is envious of the guy in the fastback stang. Hence forth I think I'm gonna order that kit that includes a new wheel for like $120 total that I saw in Jas's Islander resto. (Thanks who ever posted that) Obviously there is no windshield and the PO cut off the original consoles before he registered the boat as homemade and then gave it to his aunt the preacher before moving to either Minnesota or Michigan (I forget which). Well that's our list of woe... Let's see what's next shall we.

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

So here are my long term plans for the boat replace the rotten stringer, add foam board floatation placed horizontally like Jas and PMC's, re-re-deck her, build consoles and possibly a windshield though I may buy one, paint her a medium blue with a white stripe, and enjoy Clarke's Hill lake (Lake Strom Thurmond to those of you in South Carolina) and the Savannah river.

For those of you who lack mad photo shop skilz (me) here is a tip for deciding paint color. Take a pic of the boat,car,etc. put it up on your computer screen and trace it onto a sheet of paper just like you did as a kid. You can do this several times or just get it copied. Then bust out the crayons and....

As another most likely useless tip I was able to make a template out of my old floor by laying it out onto the new ply and spray painting around the edges.

Ok so that pretty much takes care of the history behind my beloved Chug-A-Boom so now it's almost time to get to work. My short list goes like this.
1. Clean out the storage unit formerly known AS MY BOAT

2 Finish removing the "jewelry"
BTW I noticed this after spending five minutes under the bow cover with it while removing the port side cleat.

Glad they moved heh?
3 Get the steering removed.
4 Remove last of the wiring.
5 Build an engine stand.
Hopefully in the time it takes me to get this far I will have sacked away enough coin to purchase a respirator and the sanding attachment for my grinder. Lord I hope the Chinese start ordering more kaolin.

On the way out I wanna leave you guys with three things I'd love to do to this boat two of them I know I won't one of which......

First the ultimate boat top,

Second the console I REALLY want

Finally I kinda wanna make this old chicken light off of a cab over into an LED nav light.

Well back to work.

 

[GT1000000]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Welcome to the dry dock Kenneth,

Love your intro...I tend to be long winded and somewhat short minded...we should get along like two peas in a pod...

Glad you have come aboard to bring this 'ol floater back to life...looks like a nice solid foundation upon which to build many wonderful family memories on...

I'll be tagging along to help out any way I can and generally try and cheer you on to a successful completion of this project...

Keep asking questions and posting pics...

A bunch of other super helpful and knowledgeable guys will be along shortly for the ride...

Have fun and best regards,
GT1M

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Looking forward to your progress. Keep posting pics and asking questions and we'll be here all along the way!!! the first link of my signature has some drawings and details on what all you will be doing.

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

GT thanks for falling through and glad you enjoyed the intro.
WoG thanks to you to and to be honest I book marked the links in your signature the first day I found Iboats.

 

[jigngrub]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

You actually have quite a bit of work before the grinding comes into play.

When you get the boat cleaned out post some pics of what you have to work with... transom, deck, hull after deck and cap removal.

 

[Bill3434]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Don't worry about the time, I knew I would have to restore mine, I spent 6 months reading forums before I even started. Then when I started I ran into all sorts of issues and challenges. 10 1/2 months after I started I'm just now getting to glassing this coming weekend.
By the way I'm still reading and figuring out what I'm going to do. The thing about reading all the work that goes on in the forums by the time you get to a particular part you will have most of your questions answered ans probably several courses of action you can take based on your money supply and your skill level.

Editors Note,
I want to apologize in advance for three things,

1. Due to time and money issues my progress will be slow.

2. Due to the passage of time and some computer snafu's many of the pictures I had of the boat are missing. Should I run across them I may post them later on.

3. I am (the admiral assures me) both slow witted and long winded. I'm going to break up my posts some but this may still be way more novel-esque than is desirable Especially here in the beginning.
All that being said,

Back in 2004 my mom bought me two one dollar raffle tickets from a church fund raiser, the prize, a 1976 Chapparral fishing boat. More specifically this Chapparral tri-hull,

As you might imagine given that we are having this conversation, I won! The old girl came home with me and after buying a battery for sixty dollars (thirty times the price of the boat mind you) a trailer light kit, and some rattle can primer for the (ahem) "home-built" trailer. We were ready to go. I got the old Johnson to fire with the help of some ether and since she pee'd just fine I changed out the plugs and the gear oil and off to the lake I went. (Still the only paid vacation of my life.) After a week at the lake (including a memorable incident where I ran out of fuel and towed the boat back to shore while swimming with a rope around my waist as my brother's friend provided morale support from the helm. ) I knew two things,
1. I love my boat!
2. She really needed some work.
As a call center dweeb who wasn't making squat at the time the boat had to sit. (outside and uncovered cause hey, the wood deck is already rotten and the hull is fiberglass. In the spring of 05 I made a career change and became a long haul truck driver. Upside more money, downside no time, hence the boat sat for three more years. (still uncovered and outside) When I got a job as a local driver I thought I finally had it licked.....the admiral.....not so much! Finally in 2010 she changes her mind after spending a day at the lake in a borrowed boat. The garage gets cleaned out the boat gets moved inside and work commences. I get the old deck stripped out and a new one laid in before the admiral informs me she has a job. Sounds great right, more money means..... more boat money!.... Yeah not so much...her mom's daycare flops leaving me buying her a hundred bucks worth of gas every week for six months with a total return on investment of maybe eighty dollars pay to her. Halfway through this nightmare however a lot of prayers got answered and we found out that another "delay" would arrive in August. We named her Selena.

Thus expanding the number of deck hands to two.

The admiral's first and my best xbox buddy.

Now after lurking around here since January I'm finally going to get back at it. Fortunately the old girl has been inside for the last couple years so even though there is a ton of work to be done my list of woes hopefully isn't any longer. Lord willing and with a lot of help from my Iboats buddies me the wife and the kiddies will be out on the lake in no time.....err how about, sometime?

Hope this works as preview post and Opera mini don't appear to jive, either way I gotta roll now. At least two more posts coming this evening when I get home.

 

[mrdjflores]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

keep the information flowing....
alot of work ahead, but will be well worth it, especially knowing that your family will be safe on it..

have you done any inspections on the transom for rot???
if the deck and stringers are shot....good chance the transom is too

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Jigngrub, Yeah there is a bit of work to do before grinding though as I just installed the current deck two years ago :facepalm: the grinding will come up sooner rather than later I think. As to the pictures they will come up as soon as I take 'em. I have every reason to believe I will being getting in early tomorrow so I've spent the last two days cleaning up the honey do list. Hopefully I'll have more pics tomorrow.

Bill3434, Yeah projects have a way of running their own course at their own pace but fortunately like you said I'm learning a ton.

MrdJFlores, Yeah I'm pretty sure the transom is gonna be a lost cause but I've still got my fingers crossed as it passes the tap test and the bounce on foot of motor test.


As a last thought for the night guys just remember the difference between chillin' hard

and workin' hard

is often which way the camera is facing.

Note any appearance of trucker's gut is purely an optical illusion. :facepalm:

 

[Bill3434]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

My biggest problem was work space, finally got a powered storage unit. Then mother natures heat, grinding fiberglass when it's over a hundred degrees is a drain. I could only work about an hour. Once it got a little cooler I was able get three hours of grinding in one day, my grinder managed to take one hour of grinding without burning up. The down side which I didn't mind it needed about an hour to cool down before I did another hour.
I got a friend that wants me to help on his boat when I get done. Bet it won't take as long since I got a clue has to what I'm doing.

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Got home extra early though I may have to go back out. In the mean time I pulled out my notebook and here is a diagram of how I "glassed in" the "new" deck back in 2010.

Can't make sense of it? No sweat I'll break it down for you.

Most of the problems I'm seeing now are due to either height changes in the deck,

or my complete lack of prep.

WoG and company feel free to use me as the what not to do example,
I call this pic. Lack of Prep Equals a Lack of Adhesion.

and remember kids epoxy is not 5200!

 

[mrdjflores]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

don't beat yourself up too bad....we'll do that for you
just kidding....

this is a learning process for all of us

 

[glnbnz]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Another good restro thread I would like to come aboard and watch. Love the story!!

Good luck

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

glnbnz, welcome aboard glad you've enjoyed the story thus far.
MrdJFlores, feel free to beat away as my usual learning process involves repeatedly banging my head into the wall.

I was taking a break from demo....and well I maybe getting ahead of my self but..... I decided to work on some seating

....vroom vroom ....

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Thanks to the extra time today I got a lot done. The boat is no longer a storage container.

Though I can't say the same for the garage

Not surprisingly some of my left overs were still in the boat. Lunch lady gloves with which to lay epoxy. :redface:

Also remember how I talked about re-enforcing my stringers well this is the stuff I used...after I cut off the pickets of course. :facepalm:

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

oops

 

[sphelps]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

This looks like it,s gunna be a fun one ! May I tag along and watch all the excitement ..
Maybe you can get the preacher to bless the rebuild because after all it all started with the church fundraiser ...
Much luck Ken !
SP..

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

Right so you know how I was hoping against hope that somehow the transom would escape all that pesky rot and how I wasn't going to core sample it till I had a filler so as not to introduce moisture into my miraculously whole transom? Well my crossing two sets of fingers on each hand trick didn't work. I saw some of the glass had fallen off and was able to get a core sample of damp rotten wood using my index finger.

Ugh, So new transom it is then.
I'll have plenty of questions regarding this part of my restore I'm sure but right now there are some weird things I found that I'd like to run by ya'll. Such as isn't 1976 a little late for cable steering? I always wondered what in the world was the purpose of those screws till today when I saw this,

It may be hard to make out but the blue arrow points to one good quality factory mount and the red to it's twin still holding it's pully. That was the only pully but the other side has a matching pair of mounts. There are three large holes cut into the splash well two on the port and one on the starboard as well as an additional hole for the current steering cable. Though the gas and electric lines use one of the port side holes there appears to be no use for the starboard hole and all three look well done. Also though the PO used exactly none of them the boat has these comparatively massive wire guides glassed in under the bow and gunnals.

Why the PO ignored them in favor of useing THROUGH HULL steel bolts I'll never know. Though his method of mounting things appears yo have been selftap and forget it.

My poor splash well.

 

[KennethfromGA]

Re: The Legend of Chug A Boom, or how a man and his tri-hull conquered the garage???

So that covers most of the big stuff. I got the last of the "jewelry" off the boat today as long as you don't count the rub rail. Speaking of that I removed the already too short rub rail insert and managed to crack it in four separate places.

Once do to a pinched rail, once due to a lose rivet and twice due to me getting in a hurry. Like I said though it was already too short by a good foot or two and I've heard of it being replaced with rope and saw one boat here that had replaced it with LED lights. Another bridge for another day I suppose. In all honesty the work could have took longer but three of the four studs on the transom ...eyes... broke off.

When I replace those I think I'll add some 1/4" aluminum as I intend to use them for towing tubes and what not. As opposed to having a pylon. As a question is this dock rash or something else.

Gel coat failure perhaps?
Well that covers today's work and it looks like I'll be home alone this week so hopefully by this time next week I will have done all I can do sans $,?,?,or ?.

SP, welcome aboard and please feel free to enjoy yourself. Just watch out I'm liable to something stupid at any time.

Bill, I'm quite fortunate to have an enclosed work space so no worries for me on that front. Right now my main concern is the financial side. No big worries though just see that as the slow point. Where as space is a hindrance for others.