"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 21:31:36 -0000, "Jim"
wrote:

Hello,

Please could anyone advise me: I've got a 15ft fibre glass boat with
wooden
floor the floor has some fibre glass resin at the sides presumably to fix
it
in place.

My problem is the floor is rotten! I also need to get under it to see if
theres any damage to the bottom of the boat underneath.

Can you please advise me if I should lift this old ply floor or perhaps
seal
it and put another layer of ply and also if there should be many holes in
it?!?!?!?

When you say "hole in the floor" is there a space between the floor
and the outer hull? In other words, is the floor placed on a stringer
system of some sort or is it layed on some sort of core?

I'm going to assume that the "floor" of the boat is actually part of
the hull because of it's size. If it is a balsa or foam cored boat,
then you might have a problem - the balsa/foam is part of the
construction and can't be replaced as such - you might as well build a
new boat. The only reason I say this is because I've had a couple of
14/15 foot Crestliners here along with a couple of MFGs, etc. that I
removed some antique outboards from. All the boats were built with
this balsa and/or foam core construction when I cut them up for
disposal and every single one of them had a rotten floor.

Finally, If your floor is soft, it's a pretty good bet that the
transom is probably soft also. I'd check that.

Later,

Tom
S. Woodstock, CT
----------
"My rod and my reel - they comfort me."

St. Pete, 12 Lb. Test

If it is just the floor. You can cut it out and build a new floor with
plywood and resin / glass. But if you go this way, measure the width of the
boat at several places along the length of the floor. Maybe even build a
2x4 bracing system to keep the boat from flexing outward when the floor is
removed. We did a buddy's Reinell a few years ago, transom was or, just the
floor bad. We learned we should of measured the width before removing
floor.