Seaswirl tri hull front motor mount is rotten:-(

Please Please help. We are right in the middle of boating season and I have bad bad news. I have a 1979 tri hull seaswirl with a 4cyl and omc400 sterndrive. The motor was acting up out on the river so I took the doghouse off and gave it some throttle and I could see the front of the motor lift up. I wanted to cry:-( It had 8 lag bolts holding it down and they have all lifted right out. I can not afford to remove the motor and rebuild the whole motor mount. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this. I was thinking about getting a piece of angle iron and bolting it to the solid piece of wood between the fuel tank and motor to help hold the motor down. Fill the holes with resin and put new lag bolts? I don't know but I need to do something to get this thing back in the water. It's hot out! Thanks for your help. Ryan

Re: Seaswirl tri hull front motor mount is rotten:-(

Sorry to hear about your problems. IMHO you should be more concerned with safety than haste. If the motor mounts are that rotted there's a high probability that the stringers and transom have major issues as well. a 33 yr old boat usually does. I would advise a thorough inspection of everything before trying to apply a Band Aid to such a major issue. Most of the members here on this forum I believe will agree that a quick fix is not what you should do.

Re: Seaswirl tri hull front motor mount is rotten:-(

My old boat was a 72 SeaSwirl trihull and it was rotted from bow to stern....... I scrapped it out because it wasn't worth rebuilding.


That said, the front motor mount was rotted and the motor mount lags loose and pulling out. I oversize drilled the holes, slathered it with JBweld, dropped in a couple concrete lag anchors, more JB weld, then ran the lags home. The motor mount was still tight when I scrapped out the boat. While that did tighten up the front mount, it was still rotted to *ell and so was the rest of the wood in the boat.....

If you are going to keep the boat it would be best to chop out the front mount and glass in a new piece of wood. But once you start that it's going to be the deck, then the stringers, then the transom. Would the old boat be worth all that work?