Flats Hunter: Fly fishing and Flats Fishing Art & Prints

The Damage:

1. Introduction	2. History
3. Before Pics	4. The Damage
4. Square One	5. Grind, Grind, Grind!
6. New Stringers	7. New Bulkheads
8. The Cockpit Floor

I suspected the boat had some water damage when I purchased her but I had to get out the hole saw to confirm my suspicions.

I drilled a few holes into the cockpit sole where I thought it was suspect and upon inspection the wood was obviously rotten due to water intrusion.

I knew that since the cockpit sole was water logged, odds were there was water in the hull and the stringers would be rotted as well. Unfortunately the only way to know for sure is to tear it out and see what lies inside!

What a disaster! I was expecting to find some water but what I found was practically a lake that had been sitting inside the hull, eating away at everything it came in contact with.

As you can see from the photos, in the course of the boat's life someone attempted to fill in the hull with a two part, expanding closed cell foam. The problem is that the foam never really filled the space and the water that entered was absorbed by the foam. I can only imagine how much weight this added to the hull.

The stringers were of course rotted and needed to be replaced. At this point I also decided to remove all of the bulkheads which were also rotten.

Square One...