Enjoying a day off and it's too dern hot to be outside so I figured I'd share the 2 year saga of putting my '78 Mariner right. The year was 1999. I'd been fishing out of a Grumman 16 for a few years, and was tired of being limited here on the Chesapeake Bay by seas over 1'. Plus my 2 standard fishing buddies are each over 200 lbs- it was necessary to get a bigger boat. I am limited to a certain weight by my tow vehicles- '73 Dodge class C rv and my '94 Nissan truck. Hard to find a plastic boat 19'-22' under 5 thousand pounds. Located my boat and made the deal, looking at weight as the main limiter to other boats. I wasn't planning on a project, but enough needed to be done to the boat to make it the way I wanted it that a pretty serious teardown was the result. First thing that happened was I noticed that the flush mount compass swung up to 90 deg. depending on where the helm was positioned. Not good. The console was originally out of a Sea Ox, and had unused space that I wanted to use, so out it came for modding. That led to pulling up the floor, and issues were found(as well as about 10lbs of lead weights). I had about 8 ribs that were cracked. So- talked to a few welders about various ideas, and ultimately ended up welding some schedule 40 aluminum pipe halfs over the cracks. I did the prep(sandblasting the areas to be welded) and the welder did the rest. Here are a few pics from the beginning.
I didn't get any "before" interior pics. Here's a shot of the ouside of the hull(That "Wild Duck" business had to go!)
Couple shots of the hull interior after welding the ribs.
The "carpet" on the topsides was ancient indoor/outdoor stuff that was shedding little blue plastic bits every time the wind blew. It would have to be dealt with as well. The channels that hold the plywood rod holders(stiffeners) were either broken, or had come loose from their attachment points. The plywood was rotten. I got extrememly lucky as my Mom worked for Northrup Grumman at the time, and they were relocating the facility she worked at. One day she shows up with a trunk full of aluminum. Stamped and extruded angle of various sizes, plate stock, square tubing, etc. It was all going in the dumpster, but she intercepted it. Having this stuff at hand was a huge advantage to me as the project moved along. Stamped angle made nice break points for vinyl decking material, and the extruded stuff was used for various fastening problems. More on this later. While I thought and pondered on the floor re-installation, a lot of sanding occured, both on the outside and inside. That logo on each side was almost 1/8" thick paint! I didn't want to strip the hull, good original paint that was still solid I wanted to keep and paint over. Here's a shot of my son, Justin, trying his hand at sanding. That didn't last long.
Ultimately I decided to go with a wood sub-floor rather than the original aluminum stringers, for strength and stiffness. Now I know that mixing treated wood and aluminum is generally a bad idea, but in this case the wood barely contacts the ribs, and after 10 years of almost exclusive salt water use, I haven't seen any problems. I used treated 2x8 and 2x6 boards, that I also treated with anti-rot deck treatment. I cut out the boards where the ribs fell with a hole saw for clearance, and made aluminum stand-offs with 1/8" by 2" aluminum stock. The stand-offs are lagged into the wood and riveted into the ribs. The cross pieces are notched together and thru bolted, and I added the gussets for floor support.
More pics to come as the rebuild chugs along into 2000!
Pat in MD
I didn't get any "before" interior pics. Here's a shot of the ouside of the hull(That "Wild Duck" business had to go!)
Couple shots of the hull interior after welding the ribs.
The "carpet" on the topsides was ancient indoor/outdoor stuff that was shedding little blue plastic bits every time the wind blew. It would have to be dealt with as well. The channels that hold the plywood rod holders(stiffeners) were either broken, or had come loose from their attachment points. The plywood was rotten. I got extrememly lucky as my Mom worked for Northrup Grumman at the time, and they were relocating the facility she worked at. One day she shows up with a trunk full of aluminum. Stamped and extruded angle of various sizes, plate stock, square tubing, etc. It was all going in the dumpster, but she intercepted it. Having this stuff at hand was a huge advantage to me as the project moved along. Stamped angle made nice break points for vinyl decking material, and the extruded stuff was used for various fastening problems. More on this later. While I thought and pondered on the floor re-installation, a lot of sanding occured, both on the outside and inside. That logo on each side was almost 1/8" thick paint! I didn't want to strip the hull, good original paint that was still solid I wanted to keep and paint over. Here's a shot of my son, Justin, trying his hand at sanding. That didn't last long.
Ultimately I decided to go with a wood sub-floor rather than the original aluminum stringers, for strength and stiffness. Now I know that mixing treated wood and aluminum is generally a bad idea, but in this case the wood barely contacts the ribs, and after 10 years of almost exclusive salt water use, I haven't seen any problems. I used treated 2x8 and 2x6 boards, that I also treated with anti-rot deck treatment. I cut out the boards where the ribs fell with a hole saw for clearance, and made aluminum stand-offs with 1/8" by 2" aluminum stock. The stand-offs are lagged into the wood and riveted into the ribs. The cross pieces are notched together and thru bolted, and I added the gussets for floor support.
More pics to come as the rebuild chugs along into 2000!
Pat in MD
