I think that the methods are pretty much the same. If your boat
relied on the strength of the stringer material to keep it from flexing
then the rot may be part of why the stringers are no longer on the
hull. It also could just be a bad layup. You need to really support
the hull well while you fabricate and install new stringers.

Some builders anticipated the stringer material rotting and put enough
fiberglass on the stringers so that the fiberglass would be strong
enough even after the wood rotted. Today some builders are using
composites as stringers. No wood. I have seen fiberglass sheet used
alone.

anxious boater wrote:
I have a 1969 fiberglass (polyester) hulled houseboat. It's a Thunderbird
Drift-R-Cruise. All the engine stringers and three interior stringers are
shot. Everything I have read so far basicly says to epoxy the stringers in,
fillet and glass over. I am certain the first two steps were omitted, either
when this boat was built or this job was done in the past. Some of the
inside stringers aren't even resting on the hull interior surface. From what
I can see, water leaked in at the bow (and other places) and simply migrated
to the back of the boat. The rot is really bad starting in the bildge (the
stringers oozed out when I started cutting!) and improves some moving up
closer to the bow. Is this poor boat building, or just the way it was done
back then?

Now I'm not so sure that I should put the new stringers in using the current
methods. For example, will the vibration from the motors cause cracking in
the hull glass if they are epoxied in, solid as a rock?

Thanks,
Steve