Eli wrote:

Well,
It's certainly not a given that your deck will have signifigant rot.
If the deck was built out of quality marine ply, then hopefully
things should be ok once dried out. I would avoid the varnish
solution, as it definitely can not be considered a permanantly
reliable one. Epoxy is just made for this type of situation. It
penetrates the wood, and makes it, for all intents and purposes,
waterproof. Now the situation you have to bear in mind is that you
have end-grain that most surely has not been epoxy sealed all along
the sheer of your deck. Epoxying the top and bottom surfaces will do
nothing for you if that end-grain is not completely sealed with
epoxy...this can quite a lot of epoxy as the end grain sucks it up
like a sponge. The only way to seal this is to remove the deck. This
will make coating the bottom side easier anyways. For the top, I
would cover the deck in Dynel (available from Defender Marine supply
in NY) set in epoxy. This provides a traditional looking finish that
has excellent non-skid characteristics.
Hope this helps
-Eli

You forgot to mention that he'll need to paint or varnish over the epoxy
to protect it from UV exposure. Otherwise the top surface will degrade
in a matter of months.