Chevymaher - I’ve looked at your site now and it will be very helpful. Not sure that I am up to or able to do as much work as you did. My question now is how did you take all of the measurements of the wood (deck, stringers, etc.) so that you would know what to put back in? It seems as though everything was destroyed taking it out. ( Especially the stringers.)
I am the original owner of my 1986 16’ Horizon. It has always been stored inside for the winter. My deck is in great shape. The worst areas are the boards surrounding the ski locker and fuel tank. The top two inches of these boards were not glassed at the factory. The foam is dry in every location that I’ve checked except for under the ski locker floor. Bummer! I have not taken the fuel tank out yet. There is no way I will be able to take out the engine to work on mine. I don’t have that equipment. Right now I am thinking of taking out the floor from the ski locker back and see if there is a way to “patch” this. I know that is not ideal. Not sure about taking ski locker floor out or not, even though I know it is wet underneath.
Go look at my thread (1987 PowerPlay) - I just started measuring last night. I've left as much of the rotten wood in as I can until I take measurements. For the wood that was too rotten and just crumbled out, I've pulled strings where the tops of the stringers would be and am pulling measurements from those.
If your boat is anything like mine, under the ski locker floor is going to have water. The manufacturer of my boat did not glass the under-side of any of the decking, so the bottom of the ski locker floor was soaked and rotten.
I had no idea how I was going to get the engine out of mine either, but I ended up finding a co-worker with a back-hoe and he helped me pull the engine out. As
@chevymaher said, you'll have to just make do...where there's a will, there's a way. He's also correct - you're in the denial phase. I was there just a few weeks ago, but I decided to bare down and just press forward. I don't have a plan for everything that needs to be done, but I'm just looking at the task right in front of me and thinking about what the next step might be. Right now my task is to sketch dimensions for the structure before tearing any more stringers or bulkheads out, since I now have all the decking up.