This should (hopefully) show the whole boat, at time of purchase. It's a 1978 19' 3" Glasply Cuddy which the previous owners had fabricated a hard-side cockpit onto. They had also started a repower job, supposedly fixing the old I/O motor hole in the transom...
This is the transom "repair" after I was able to take off the thin aluminum plate which they had bolted over it. I am glad that they didn't try to float this boat since their repair was garbage. You should not have huge voids in the transom and you definitely shouldn't be able to peel the cured fiberglass off...
Notice also, the old motor bolt holes "fixed" with caulking pumped into the holes..
Decided all of their work had to go, so i cut out around it a few inches then stepped the outside. Had planned on reinforcing on the inside with an additional sheet of ply, but, well, we'll get to that.
open motor compartment with (thank all the gods) fiberglass stringers. You can also see their aluminum plate and wooden floor support in the background.
Other side. Wood removed by hand... Plans were already changing here. Going to have to do a complete transom replacement. The wood around the crappy I/O hole repair had been sound, as had the wood several inches away; however upon more complete inspection the transom was totally shot. Now I had serious concerns about the stringers, since this boat was produced when some had wood cores and some did not...
Grinding off the U-bolts from the back of the boat. You know, the ones where the trailer holds go! The ones which apparently only need one of the two nuts/washers in place.... sigh...
I had enough misgivings about prior work and wood condition and I wanted to know *for sure* that the stringers were solid and that this boat wasn't about to take a trip to the dump, so off comes the gel-coat and rear glass, with 3-4" of overhang left on the perimeter to grind down and fair in the new glass (eventually).
YAY! Stringers look good! No wood. The subfloor; however, has seen better decades. I would guess that the weepy transom has been wicking water into the floor plywood for a while before the motor was ever removed.
