I had a few months before winter so I started out by working on the trailer.  I shortened it almost a foot, adjusted the bunk locations, replaced the fenders, steps, hitch and winch post.  I also added a mount for a spare tire that I later find out that I can't get the spare tire in/out, so that needs to be redone.  I also redo all lighting, wiring, suspension, have the frame blasted and painted, basically an all new trailer.  By the time I finished I was into the next year (winter pause halfway through).

In my spare time I also worked on sorting through what parts I will use and get cleaned up.  I also picked up an air scoop that matches the style of the hull and had a friend do some paintwork on it.  I still need to make a base/mount for the air scoop.  When the kitten was younger he also found the scoop to be an awesome fort.

By this point I've moved into my new house, 1 door down.  Pretty excited because the boat actually fits in this garage.  After a bit of down time I'm back at it, somewhere around 2018.  The boat came with two Berkeley JC-A jet drives, as well as a manual place diverter.  At this time my parents are living in NH, and I find a complete JC-G jet pump out there.  They pick it up for me and I grab it while visiting.  I also pick up a new place diverter shifter, straight snoot, as well as win a droop snoot in a raffle so I have some options to try on setup.  Everything gets powder coated white, but I fail to realize certain surfaces can't get powder coated so I have to wet sand some parts to get them to bolt up properly.  Around this time I also meet the guy that runs the Allegheny river rats boat club in the southern tier of NY and western PA.  Cool dude, has an awesome shop.  He machined the intake and a shoe for me, as well as built a ride plate.  In addition, helped me reassemble the jet drive and get it ready to bolt into the hull when I'm ready to do so.

By this point I couldn't procrastinate any more and needed to start digging into the fiberglass.  There's a couple reasons for the procrastination.  First, I had zero clue what I was doing.  Second, I discovered the boat was not as solid as I thought it was.  When I bought the boat there was one section on the right stringer that was delaminating.  No big deal I thought.  Well, turns out a previous owner replaced this stringer and used pressure treated.  Not good, has to come out.  I also found that the left stringer, while original, had some rot in the rear near the engine mounts.  Figure might as well yank it all out.  While the stringers are out, I found some moisture damage in the transom, which you'll see is worse than expected.  Also, the top of the boat was removed at some point and reattached terribly.  Here we go...

Removal of the paint, glue, etc. was done with an angle grinder and flap disc, as well as a palm sander.  A multitool with cutoff blade and sawzall got most of the stringers out.  I also used a chainsaw to dig out some of the left stringer, and a mini belt sander and die grinder worked well for the tight spots.

Fixing the transom.

I found a youtube channel, boatworkstoday.  This channel has been a huge help for me, highly recommend.  This channel not only shows how to do certain tasks, but helped me in selection of materials.  I'm out east, and without much for local sources I have been ordering just about everything for fiberglass through jamestown distributors.  1708 and 1700 glass, totalboat epoxy resin, fairing compound, silica and chop.  The coosa board is from a place in FL and supplies like chip brushes, fin rollers, gloves and stir sticks (tongue depressors) are from amazon.  I opted for epoxy because I didn't know all history of the boat and since it was already painted, I felt epoxy would be the strongest method to use.

After all of the transom wood was removed, I bolted a piece of plywood to the outside of the boat and started removing the inside layers of fiberglass that had delaminated.  The plywood had packaging tape on the face to reduce chance of it getting stuck to the hull.  I had sections of hull that were about an 1/8" thick here and very weak, so that plywood was important.

After removing the delaminated sections, I ground the edges to as best of an angle as I could and started tracing for the 1708.  I glassed in the 1708 with epoxy resin, and got everything within 1/16" of flat.  I then used epoxy fairing compound to get everything completely flat.

Next up I made a template, then cut out the coosa board.  The coosa was fitted, rounded the edges, then sanded and prepped to go in.  I mixed up some thickened epoxy and set the coosa, clamping it down.  After that had cured thickened epoxy was used to give a filet around all edges.

A final sand, then 3 layers of 1700 went over the coosa.  I trimmed the edges around the hole for the jet drive, and will later seal this up with epoxy.

Next up was stringers.  I first got the boat off the trailer, supported under the bow and two jackstands at the rear corner, making sure the boat was level left to right.  I modified the stands with threaded rod, nut and plate welded together for adjustment and a 2x4 on top to spread out the load.  These worked out great.

I picked up two 2"x8"x16' kiln dried douglas fir, picking the best grain orientation and straightest material I could get.  The hull got a final sand and prep and the stringers were fitted.  I used 1/8" ply and an angle finder to determine the fit and chamfer on bottom of the stringer to get a nice fit.  A string line was ran from transom to bulkhead to determine height, based on measurements I took before tearing the boat apart.

Next up the stringers got a final sand and then bedded down using thickened epoxy.  I also added a filet of thickened epoxy at the same time.  The stringers were done one at a time to make things easier.  When I got to the second stringer I also learned to start using painters tape as an "edge" to limit how much area outside of where I was working needed to be sanded after.

So when I said the deck was previously reattached poorly, what I mean is I could grab ahold of the single layer of glass tape and rip it off with my hands.  So next I removed all rub rail, cut through the tape I couldn't easily rip off, cut through the tabbing at top of bulkhead, and lifted the deck off.  I used ratchet straps and some furring strips to get this up in the air and hung from the rafters.  I cut out the bulkhead around the stringers to give more room to glass those in, and finished glassing the stringers.  While letting things cure, I also filled in the gas tank mount holes with thickened epoxy and 1708.  I'll address the bottom side of those when the hull is flipped over.

More photos of underside of deck work.

Very very nice. Good job so far


Sent from my iPhone using SoCal Jet Boats mobile app

At this point it was time to put the deck back on the boat, but first I sanded and prepped as much of the seams and anywhere else I would need to get at for reattaching.  In addition I got out all the old brittle resin and whatnot that was sitting inside the bow from previous poor work.  Fortunately it didn't take much to get things lined back up, the hull kept its shape quite well.

I used ratchet straps to hold the top and bottom together, then taped the seam for a backing when glassing the seam back together so I didn't get epoxy resin all over the outside of hull.  On the inside I used 2 layers of fiberglass tape, (1) 4" then (1) 8".  I started at the back and worked my way to the front.

At one point while working the power went out for a few hours, but not wanting to stop mid way I just started working in the dark with a flashlight.  Somehow still tuned out great.  From the transom to the bulkhead in one day, and in the bow a couple days later.  Squeezing through the bulkhead to glass up inside the bow was not fun.

Now that the hull was back together it was time to replace the bulkhead.  I had been trimming away at this to work but didn't want to take it out yet to keep some strength and shape in the hull while it was apart.

After removal it was more sanding and prep.  I used some underlayment scraps leftover from the stringer templates to piece together the shape for a template, using hot glue to piece it together.  I transferred this to the coosa, cut out and test fit, then added some holes for access.  All edges were rounded and it got sanded and prepped for a layer of fiberglass on each side.  I use a router to give a nice radius on the coosa, but still go back over with sandpaper by hand.  Like elsewhere, 1700 and epoxy resin was used for glass.