We set up a sea trail, splashed the boat, and on the first turn of the key the engine kicked over and away we went. The old boat ran great and was simply awesome. I was truly impressed. My father said if you do not buy it I will....So I bought it.

Now after a few months of owning the boat I was bare foot on the deck walking around the port side of the console. I stepped on the joint of the deck section and the hull. I felt an ever so slight flex. I had never felt the flex in the floor while wearing shoes. I investigated further and found the same on the front of the console on the port side as well. From this point I pulled the deck hatch up in front of the console and looked at the underside of the deck. It looked solid but, once I pried at it began to de-laminate....Worried I asked my father to look at it. We checked the floor and found this to be the only spot where the floor felt weak. So we thought we would only have to fix the front port corner of the floor. I used the boat for the rest of the summer and pulled it out in October with out the floor feeling any worse. We brought the boat to my father?s friend?s barn where we would disassemble everything. The next weekend my father went to work on the boat with out me because I had plans. I got a call that evening.

"This is going to be a lot bigger than we thought."

"What do you mean?"I asked "Is the entire floor shot?"

"Yup, it is completely water logged and weighed probably 300-400+ pounds. I could not lift it out so, I propped it up to let it drain. Just wait till you see it." My father said.

We went over the barn on Monday night and this is what we found and how we fixed it....Hope this helps others that have to endure this process.

The floor out of the boat.

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The de-lamination started in many places. The screw holes where just one place where it started.The factory just screwed through the wood with out adding caulk to prevent water entering the wood. The problem in this area was made worse by the fact the factory ground down areas of the underside of the floor down to the wood to make the deck fit flush. This allowed water to enter the wood as well.

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The next area was where the console cables and wires come through the floor in into the console (oval cut out). The factory cut the hole for the bezel to fit in however they never re-glassed that area. So with the end gain exposed the wood wicked what ever water was around up into it. They also cut a hole on the port side under console with no cable running through it and never re-glass this area as well (circular cut out). I have no idea what this hole is for other than collecting water.

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In the fish locker area as well there is an area where the factory completely missed glassing the end of one plywood panel. Also in this area the factory just dumped the resin over the wood in places and never added much matte to hold it together, if any at all. So the resin would just crack allowing moisture to enter.

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Probably the biggest factor in the floor rotting is the fact that there are many places to trap water in this area and once it is in there it is though to get out. So it sits and evaporates and then recollects on the underside of the floor. Look along the port side. There are two areas that drain to nowhere. Well one drains to the fuel tank basin area then it goes nowhere. I suppose it you left the Beckson plates off while the boat was in storage this would allow some to evaporate out.

The foam around the tank was filled with water. If you look you will notice the holes I put in the foam. This helped to evaporate the water quicker. The dehumidifier helps as well

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I did clean out the areas under the floor and it came out very nice. You could now read the tank's manufactures tag. After inspecting the tank we determined that we are going to keep it.

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Interesting how the fuel lines run. Look at the image below. You will see there are two rubber hoses that run from the tank to the bulkhead at the front of the fish locker. At that point they go to metal hard lines in the locker area through the starboard side of the locker where they go back to rubber lines. It seems like rubber lines should run the entire length.

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Now with the floor out of the boat I took it off for winter storage. We will get it back out once the floor is done.

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Removal of old wood.

Now comes the fun part, removal of all of the old wood and resin. At first we just used hammers, pry bars, and chisels. This was difficult because you were always fighting the wood and glass that was still attached to the floor.

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This is when we decided to cut reliefs using a circular saw set to a shallow depth. We set the blade just deep enough to cut through the fiberglass and ?? of wood and not the floor. Be Very careful while attempting this.

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This really helped to speed the removal process along. With in a ? hour we had the rest of the wood off. It took us a couple hours to get to this point above.

A point I must stress here. When using a chisel and a hammer to remove the wood, be very careful. Remember that when the chisel gets stuck, an extra knock from the hammer could do more harm than good. I listened to that prehistoric reasoning of just whack it. This is what happened. I felt horrible when I did this.

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Now with all of the wood removed we used a grinder with a course wire wheel to clean and rough up the surface for the new wood and epoxy to bond to.

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We then took a grinder with a sanding disc to the fish locker area.

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The rebuilding of the floor.

Now with everything prepped we built a table than was bigger than the floor so we know we where working on a good flat, level surface. This is important because once you start to add wood on the back and weight it down you want to be sure that a good solid bond with out any voids. Voids = A weak bond. Once the table was built we began cutting the plywood for the backing. The factory used 1 layer of ?? then 1 layer of 3/8? to build the floor. We used 3 layers of ?? and staggered the joints. This would certainly help to build a stronger floor.

We weighted the floor with the wood in place for a week to help flatten it out before we began to bond it.

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Notice we have a table for the epoxy and mixing area, a prep table, and a table for the floor. It is very important to stay organized when working with resins. Due to the short working times you need to be quicksand efficient. Also with the liquid nature of the resin you can get all over everything you don?t want in a hurry. Stay organized and think about what you are going to do before you do it.

The bonding process

With all of the wood ready and floors prepped we were able to begin bonding the wood together. We made sure to tape up the top side of the floor where ever there were screw holes so the epoxy did not seep through.

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With the fish locker area having salvageable wood we began working on this first. We used west systems epoxy mixed with Cavisil to fill all of the voided areas. For those who do not know Cavisil is chopped glass cloth that gets mixed into epoxy to create a solid piece. If just epoxy is used, it will crack into pieces when stressed. The Cavisil fibers hold it together as a solid piece. The creamy substance in the images is the epoxy Cavisil mix.

After filling all of the voids we went back and layered cloth back up over the second layer of wood to create one strong piece again. Notice the surfaces are roughed up where new epoxy is being laid. This is important for a bond of the new to the old.

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With the locker section curing we began work on the floor section. We went in and filled all of the voided areas with the Cavisil then,wet out the back of the floor and the face of the wood.

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The back of the floor

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With both sides wet we laid them together and weighted the wood. I would recommend getting a bunch of 50lbs bags of rock from the Home Depot for weight. They run about $2.50 for a bag. I had a couple that I used in the back of my truck for the winter. I wish I had bought more.

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The air temp while we were working was in the 50?s but we kept a propane heater on the floor under the table to keep the table and deck floor warm.

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Once it was weighted we then tented the floor and table with the heater and let it cure for an hour before shutting the heater off. This kicked the epoxy off well.

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I missed the second layer lay up so there are no images of that but I do have the images of the final layer. Notice the overlapping of the cloth down the center of the floor. This helps the two sides work together for strength.

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Here is an image of how we beveled down to the lip so the cloth and resin would have a good surface to adhere to.

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Here is across section of how we laid up the floor.

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The reinstallation and refinishing of the boat

Now with the final glass work done on the floor it was time to bring the hull back home. My father and I figured working in his garage would be the best place to work however, would it fit?

With a little work and a set of ?go jacks? the boat was slid into the garage. We then jacked it up and blocked it into place so the wheels could be removed and we could inspect the hubs. Also helps to keep the boat in place.

Here it is comes out of Lixeys Storage in ?Whales Center? Mi? My father keeps his Montauk there in the winter also. Indoor storage for $35 a month is not bad!

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In the garage on blocks.

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With the boat secure on the blocks we then tented the hull and put a dehumidifier under the plastic to dry out all of the foam around the fuel tank. You will see later it did not help as much as we thought it would.

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After a couple days we removed the plastic and I began to finish the teak gunnels. I removed all of the hawse pipes, Stainless caps, rod holders, etc, etc, to be polished and make the sanding easier.

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Now a point to be made here is you need to pay attention and stay organized when breaking everything down. I used tackle boxes for this task. As something was taken off I created its own section and labeled the box on the back. I have another box for all of the fasteners from the floor removal.

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The fuel lines

With the deck off there is no time like the present to change all of the fuel lines. When removing the fuel filler hose we found that it the inner wall had separated and was folding over / pinching down the inside of the filler hose. I had a couple times where the filler overflowed even though the tank was not full. I thought it was the vent. I now know I was wrong. The steel coil inside the line had rusted and delaminating the filler line causing it to collapse on the inside.

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Here are the new filler/vent lines and fuel lines. The fuel lines were very expensive but worth it. The old lines were never made to handle the ethanol in today?s fuel and they were rotting from it. Though they had no visible cuts or holes they were seeping fuel out of them and into the foam. The grey on the tank is self etching primer we used to seal up any surface that looked even the slightest bit corroded.

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The fuel cavity

With the new lines being run, a new electrical system run for the entire boat, and motor rewired we decided to devise a system to pump out any water that would get into the fuel tank cavity in the future. To do this we had to remove all of the foam from behind the tank and in front of the fish locker bulkhead. To our surprise there were still gallons of water in the foam. BTW, finally a picture of me working ; ).

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This tool my Dad and I created worked great. It was a heavy duty paint scraper on a threaded broom handle

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You can see all of the water still in there?..We would dig the foam out then wet/dry vacuum all the water out. Then continue dig the foam out and let the area fill back up with water. Yes the water does move through closed cell foam.

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This job sucks!

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All Clean!

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Now with the area cleaned out we rigged a pick up here and mounted a dry sump (SUREFLOW pump that needs no prime) in the Console to draw water out of the cavity and pump it overboard. We ran plastic hose through the fitting at the stern of the cavity to a PVC pipe. We heated the PVC up and bent into a 90 then where it through a piece of mahogany and down to the bottom of the cavity.

Here is the pump on the floor and you can see the pick up in the back of the cavity.

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These are the new Stainless Thru-Hulls for the front bilge pump and the fuel cavity pump.

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New Wiring

On my outrage the batteries were up in the console and voltage drop from the console back to the motor in the old lines was so great the the motor would barely turn over even with a full charge. I moved mine to the stern.

They are wired with all positive cables running to the new guest switch first then one positive out to the motor. Then all negatives run to a single post where one negative runs to the motor. All accessories then run of one of the 3 multi core wires that run up to the console.

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Time to test the fit

Now with everything under the floor complete time for a test fit. We need to cut the hole for the rigging to come through first. This area was re-glassed once cut. A side note here. The secondary round hole you see to my father?s right really goes no where so we decided not to re-cut it.

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It was prefect on the first try! No extra grinding and glassing needed.

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Because we just re-glassed the fish locker area and did not replace the wood you can see how much the warped when it dried out. This was fixed when we mounted the floor. We placed shims under the locker floor to get it to flatten out.

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With the boat getting refinished I decided to paint the old OMC from the powerhead down to just add a nice touch to the restoration. It is starting to look like a new boat again.

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The end as of 5-03-2005

Thanks to Peter Dunster and John Flook for sending me their pictures so I could fill in the gaps of where I lost my images.