TOPIC: $100 Dollar Boat

A dumb idea that might just work!

I'm a sucker for boats. I'm even more of a sucker for "U-Fix" stuff. Of the 10 or so boats I have, NONE are in useable condition. Now that alone is pretty dumb. What could be more stupid? Well, how about spending money on yet another POS boat!

I needed a utility beater for the Shasta meet in late June. I found an ad on the Reno Nevada Craigslist for this 1964 Seaking - price 100 bucks. Only problem - the boat was 300 miles (one way) from where I live. But not to worry - I had a nice enpty trailer, and I'm insane. Lucky for me, I have a buddy that lives down in Reno, which is right along the way to the POS boat out in Fallon. So I justify the boat rescue because I was due for a visit with my old buddy. I can live with that. So, I was smart enough to service the trailer bearings before I left town. The trailer lights even worked. That's pretty good for me...........

Bought the boat from a fellow glasser over in Fallon. Boat was a bit rough, but I've seen way, WAY worse. After driving 300 miles to get the thing, there was no way I was going to leave it there. Turned out the windshield was uncracked, it had a restorable steering wheel & helm, the hardware chrome is perfect (nevada) transom looked good - floor, maybe not so good. I loaded her up & paid the seller 100 bucks. after a tour of the seller's outboard collection, I pulled this puppy back to Redding. No tickets or mechanical problems for the entire trip. Sweet.

Stay tuned for more on this saga, as I try to prep her for Shasta, on the cheap.

Bruce

"Quickie Rejuvenation", sounds like fun to watch. Gonna share some pics and progress reports with us Bruce?

You bet! As I said, the floor looks scary. Glass bubbled up & cracked in a couple places. It felt a bit spongy when walked on, but no holes. There was a lot of sand in the boat. Cool, a rolling cat-box! Transom is rock solid - thanks to the lack of rain in Nevada. The chrome is spotless. I even got a current title! Too bad it cost me 200 bucks in gas to get the $100 boat..........

Bruce Gerard,

how very well that i understand that. = i once drove from Shreveport to Laredo to pick-up a pair of Mercury MK75 OBs, that i had paid 125.oo for. - adding in fuel, wear & tear on the PU & 2 nights in a motel, they weren't very cheap.

BUT with some points/plugs/impellers/paint/etc. & some labor they ran/looked FINE, so i guess that we didn't come out too badly.

yours, satx

Bruce, nice score.That "beater" looks better than good ones I've seen.
Cal

Great find Bruce, looking forward to watching that one come along.

Bob

i have 2 1962 Sea Kings (different models) here at the house. if i can be of any help, please let me know. good luck on the cheap part =)

After cleaning out all of the sand and trash, it's obvious that the floor in the Sea King is shot. There is a large hump in the flooring that runs 2/3 of the way across the boat. It's unusual, as the defect is limited to this one place in the flooring. I'm guessing that water was pooled under the floor and froze solid, pushing the plywood upward. Also guessing that it has been this way for a LONG time. If this boat is going to be used for anything but yard art, the floor has to be replaced. Now I'm really feeling dumb. I now need to evaluate if the rehabbing boat is worth pursuing any longer. Keep in mind, the goal is to make an inexpensive work boat - not a pretty restoration. This is a tough call.

I'll update later.

BG

Bruce, if you just want a workboat, saw out the humpy 2X4 and replace it with a treated one, sister some 2X's alongside the other frame pieces and screw down some 5/8" treated over it. Nothing fancy but you will be quickly and cheaply back in the running.Glue some in/out carpet over the top for a little "appeal". This will give you a few years of running as long as the hull is not comprimised.

Hi Bruce,
You're no where near Dumb !
I was first bid on an econoline pick-up on Ebay, and ended up the only bid. So I got the truck for 750 bucks. The only problem was it cost me 1250 bucks to have it shipped from San Francisco to Cincinnati. But I have a dumbness excuse.... I'm of Polish descent.... and left handed. That there is a double whammy dumb !!!

the windshield is worth 100 bucks and you still have the traileer so you can't lose either way

Bruce,

I finally decided to work on and fix one boat before starting on any of the other 8 boats I have. It's ok to buy more but I'm sticking to one at a time for fixing up. Otherwise, I get confused.

I'm almost done with the $25 Glastron that I have about 2K in parts in.

Ken

keniskora,

that's no worse than my "free boat, motor & trailer" that i now have "i don't want to know how much invested in". = CHUCKLE.

yours, satx

OK,

So I ruined a perfectly good Sunday working on the $100.00 boat. Actually it was a fun day, and as an old friend of mine likes to say - "Any day that involves boats can't be all bad"

I did some more cleaning & poking around the boat structure. This boat used a cheapo fiberglass stringer arrangement that actually worked very well for a long time. The builder (who I beleive was Span America) made a stringer grid out of 1"X1" fir. They tabbed this to the hull with little strips of CSM. Then they simply draped a layer of roving over the grid & wetted it out with poly. That was it for the stringers! While that may sound horrible - it's actually good enough for most boats. Even though the stringers are very thin, the resin makes them rigid, and the plywood floor disperses the pressure across a very large area. The 1"X1" wood only served as a form to drape the fiberglass over. Those little sticks have pretty much rotted away - but it doesn't matter - because the fiberglass is what makes the structure. Because of water intrusion over many decades, a lot of the polyester washed off, or fell off the roving. Most people don't realize that polyester is water soluable - but it is. It takes a very long time - but water will eat away at the stuff. Since the flooring was only 3/8" thick, the stringer grid probably moved a lot. As the floor plywood started to fail, the problem only got worse. There were rollers on the keel that put a pronounced hook in the bottom. A "hook" is a dented in area of a boat bottom. It is VERY bad news to have a hooked boat. I put a straight edge along the keel and used a sharpie to mark the worst hooks in the bottom. Then I got in the boat & laid the straight edge across the stringer tops. The center stringers were no less than 1/8" higher than the other flanking stringers. In short - this hull was no good unless the hook could be repaired. With little to loose, I decided to try a trick that I have used to fix hooked boats before. Laugh if you want - you probably will - but the "fix" worked!

Here is the way I did it - the trick is to suspend the boat on the trailer - so the bottom is hanging by the edges - like a trampoline. I do this by suspending the boat in 3 places. I use a large block of styrofoam under the prow, and 2 small blocks of lumber under the heel of the transom. The hull at the prow and the heel is very thick and rigid. The points are perfect for taking all the pressure of the hull weight, because they will not deflect. This then allows the belly of the boat to relax. I then stacked about 900lbs of bricks along the center 3 stringers to push out the hook in the bottom. Here is the craziest part - I cranked up my house hot water heater to 170 degrees F & waited a few hours for it to get the water insanely hot. (hope I didn't shorten the life of my hot water heater!!) I then sent the hot water directly from the tank to the bilge of the boat. It was 80 degrees outside & the water still was still producing steam 1 hour later! The water was hot enough to soften the glass and allow the hook in the boat to be reversed. The bricks were used to keep the hull "pressed out" after the water cooled. I purposely "over bent" the boat, meaning that I pushed the hook out farther than needed, because I speculated that after the water was drained & the brickes removed, the hull would tent to "return" to the hooked shape. Well, after sitting for 3 days with the bricks removed, I'm pleased to report that the keel is completely straight and the hook is completely gone from the hull. The center 3 stringers are now 1/8" below the flanking stringers. I will apply a fresh coat of polyester resin to the roving, and once that is cured - I will lay down the new floor. The floor will be attached to the stringers with 3M 5200 and no fasteners of any sort. I'm sing 3/4" MDO single sided plywood. The paper side will be toward the bilge - it will last nearly forever. The raw wood face of the plywood floor will be glassed just like the conventional way. Contrary what I have ever read or been told - I don't believe that hot coating or glassing the bottom side of plywood flooring works. It makes the wood rot. Use the paper side of MDO plywood toward the bilge. It will last better than any other wood product. This is my opinion, but it is based on what I have observed over & over. MDO has need around for over 50 years and it's excellent material. Builders didn't use it, because of the expense.

The hook will likely not return to the boat, because the floor will be rigidly attached to all of the stringer tops - preventing any future "crowning" of the floor

Bruce

So the day wasn't a total loss from the looks of it. I like how you managed to get the hook out of the hull with the hot water and wieght. I tryed something the same afew yrs back with pretty good results. The hook should not come back as the fiberglass cooled slowly with the water cooling down. It is good to see that the 100 buck boat wasn;t a total loss. Keep up the good work there Bruce. Skip.

Bruce Gerard,

i would suggest that you PAINT the "paper side" of the MDO. - MDO is MADE for exterior road & advertizing signs that are constantly exposed to rain/snow/hail/wind/freezing/sun/etc & in all of those situations it is PAINTED, rather than "raw".

just my opinion, satx

Was the hook just in the keel ? or were there rollers supporting the hull too, to create bumps ? Or was the boat on bunks that were adjusted to low ?

Great trick, I'll have to check my "Fiberwreck" for that.

Thank you everyone for the comments.

Ken is correct about doing one project at a time. I'm the king of unfinished projects. It's a VERY tough habit to break. My only reason for taking on the $100 boat is because I need a working boat ASAP. I didn't even have a boat on the water last summer - which was depressing. Hopefully this "Quickie fix" will turn out to be a working solution for summer boating.

Stax - While I agree about exposure of the MDO as a sign, the main difference in this application is that there won't be sunlight beating the paper to death. The 5200 adheres to the raw paper extremely well. I restored a 1959 Skagit that had blocks of untreated MDO glassed to the bottom side of the plywood floor - where the seats were screwed into the floor. The MDO was the only wood in the boat that wasn't rotted. Since this is not a "forever" restoration - it think the untreated face will outlive the rest of this thing.

Chuck - the hook was in the keel and the bottom - most of them are that way. The rollers on the trailer were higher than the bunks - so the boat sagged around the roller. I'm using a different trailer - the original one is still sitting out in the Desert, Ha Ha!!

I repaired my keel in a similar fashion. There was no support under the transom and it developed a hook over the years. My keel was internally wood. I put the support under the stern and bow and filled it with water and let it soak. After a week or so it went back where it should have been. I then took the water out and put a fan blowing into the boat until it was dry. It was in the cold months and in my garage. It is still doing well after about 10 years.

OK putting faith in the boat here - I went ahead & got it registered in my name with a new CF registration number. 30 bucks. So now do I need to call it the $130.00 boat? I'm gonna break down now and do a reality check.

Expenses on the $100.00 boat so far include:

Boat: 100.00
Fuel: 200.00
Legal: 30.00
Brass drain tubes (2) 17.99
MDO plywood 34.00

Spent so far: $381.99

Oh man - this is gonna get ugly! This is next on the list:

Resin (home Deopt cheapo) 35.97
3M5200 (4 tubes @ $11.97) 35.91

The hole is getting deeper & it's not even in the water!

Just stop adding it up- It'll only hurt. Just keep telling yourself it's a $100 boat

Yes but I will bet the motor is free though isn't it? Well maybe a few bucks for spark plugs, gas n oil, carb kit, float, gaskets, gear oil and the original cost of the motor so it should be free right? Just a couple bucks?

Ha Ha Jim - if it were a normal everyday "sane" person doing this boat, then the motor would certainly be a substantial issue. However, I'm abnormal, and I happen to have a couple motors sitting around the back 40. As ashamed as I am to admit that I have all this crap - some of it is actually good stuff. Most of the engines in these photos do run. The pile of junk motors can provide needed parts - before they go to the scrap yard. And YES many are being taken in for scrap very soon. Have been in the slow process of cleaning up this mess for a couple weeks now. PS anybody need a nice vintage bathroom sink?

Ment to ask the guy you bought the boat from was his name Hugh. And the next time you find a boat up this was let me know and I can pick it up for you. Got planty of boat room here. Now if you need another boat I have a 58 Dorsett. Free.
Mike aka the pirate

Mike,

Yes, I got the boat from Hugh, over in Fallon. He mentioned you & I told hime that I would have liked to had the time to drive down meet you in person. Unfortunately, I was on a quick turn-around, as I had to work the next day. I really shouldn't have been over there in the first place, but you know how treasure hunting is!

Take care....

Bruce

Oh Boy, lets go back to the pics of your yard ornaments! I see all kinds of things I could use more of. Scrap all of that and your yard will look just like millions of other yards. How boring is that?