Before and after restoring my 30 foot cold molded fishing boat

G
GringoJohn
We spent 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, getting her back to new. Had to bring it all the way down to the hull and do a couple of patches, put in new hull and motor supports (the wood beams the motor sits on) and then built a small cabin up front with the bathroom and a ton of rod holders! It was a blast, except for being so tired, it was definitely worth it, I wish I had taken more pictures, here are some before and after and a couple of during pictures.

Here's what we started out with, classic "Palm Beach" Costa Rica Gamefisherman with a but ugly cabin:

LoneStar.jpg

Then this is what we did with the cabin and floor and pretty much everything except the hull. We were going to burn it, but I think there was soo much oil and diesel in the wood, it might have exploded and taken out the ship yard here... so we took it to the dump :)

Firewood.jpg

Here is what the front part of the boat looked like when we took out the floor and the hull. We left a little part of the cabin up front as you can see in the picture that became the visor. In the picture it shows pine boards going across, but before we put those in, we coated them with West Epoxy and surf board cloth so they are waterproof and we don't have to redo any of that. Here is the empty hull:

EmptyHull.jpg

We then had to patch the hull. There was a rotten spot under where the motor support beam was. The rotten spot was only about 6 inches across, but since the boat has three layers of wood, we opened the first layer up really big, then made like a pyramid, opening the second layer up only half the size and then the hole that went side to side was only about 9 inches big. I called West and they sent me a book on how to do it, this little patch took over a week to redo. We did it with the same weightless Laurel Wood the boat was made with, and each layer we lined up the grains with the existing grains of the surrounding wood layer. Here is the patch when we finish, before putting the board on the outside:

SR2patch.jpg

We then had some good rot on the transom and back rail so we rebuilt those as well:

EpoxyFixA.jpg

EpoxyFixB.jpg

Then I got too tired to take any more pictures, but here is the floor and cabin after we put it back together a bit!

FrontCabin.jpg

StressReeliever2interiorspace.jpg

Here is a picture of the visor we turned the front part of the cabin into. That was a lot of work as we built it a couple of times until I got it looking right. We also built those two fiberglass boxes you see on the tower that is next to the boat so I can put all the gauges in one side and the GPS / Sounder / Radio in the other. I hate those ugly black cummins things, so I made the gauge holder out of glass and hole sawed it. I replaced the original gauges with the sea cruz gauges that have built in alarms, but I had to buy two temp gauges because the first one they send me didn't work, so I don't know if I would recommend them.

StressReeliever2new.jpg

The bottom we treated with the Interconnect sealing epoxy and Micron 66 from Interlux. I really like the look of the blue color, and hopefully after 3 coats of their best paint, I won't see any buildup for the next year or so.

2 and a half months later, we got her down in the water. This is from about 5 minutes after I got it in the water. The boat on the right is the panga we built a couple of months ago. We didn't get to start it until a couple days later because I was waiting on a new Racor.

StressReeliever2b.jpg
Here's the first run last weeek:
StressReeliever2.jpg
First trip out was yesterday, she beat my other two boats releasing 6 nice sailfish and a couple of 30 pound Mahi. It was a fun build, I need to take some more pictures...

Here's a before and after just to see the difference, I really thought it came out better than I expected, what do you guys think?

Before:

LoneStar.jpg

After:

SR2.jpg
 
T
TimberTodd
Nicely done Skipper.
 
G
GringoJohn
Thanks!
 
D
DirectDrive
Nice work !
Looked like a tough job.
 
G
GringoJohn
DirectDrive said:
Nice work !
Looked like a tough job.

It was fun, but it was a lot of work. I made the mistake of building two boats back to back. I built a 28 foot panga here, from the hull up, to do rooster fishing trips, and then the day after that boat went in the water, I was still in the building mood and I jumped right on this one. I should have taken a month off, but I was pretty happy how everything turned out. But worn down! Here's a picture of the panga that we built right before this one, I think I'm going to take some time off now... Time to wet some lines!

MF.jpg

mftunatubes.jpg
 
Irishrover
Irishrover
Looks like you put a lot of work into both boats. That would have cost a fortune to do up here. That Palm Beach boat is perfect for those warm Costa Rica water. I see she has a lot of timber in the hull, that must make for a nice smooth ride. What engine did you put in her and what electronics do you run down there? Thanks for the post always like looking at boat work.
 
D
DirectDrive
GringoJohn said:
It was fun, but it was a lot of work. I made the mistake of building two boats back to back. I built a 28 foot panga here, from the hull up, to do rooster fishing trips, and then the day after that boat went in the water, I was still in the building mood and I jumped right on this one. I should have taken a month off, but I was pretty happy how everything turned out. But worn down! Here's a picture of the panga that we built right before this one, I think I'm going to take some time off now... Time to wet some lines!

MF.jpg

mftunatubes.jpg
That panga looks schweet !
Thanks for taking the time to post !
 
G
GringoJohn
Irishrover said:
Looks like you put a lot of work into both boats. That would have cost a fortune to do up here. That Palm Beach boat is perfect for those warm Costa Rica water. I see she has a lot of timber in the hull, that must make for a nice smooth ride. What engine did you put in her and what electronics do you run down there? Thanks for the post always like looking at boat work.

Ha, it cost a fortune to do here as well. The labor wasn't so bad, since it was only me and a friend doing all the work, but man I had to ship down all the materials and pay import tax, really took a beating!

It does ride pretty well. It's a flat bottomed boat in the back, so we don't go out when it's rough, but it's hardly ever rough here. I didn't take a little too much weight off the front of the boat so i'm thinking about moving the engine forward a couple of feet to bring it back down. I know, normal people use flaps, but that just seems inefficient to me and where the fun in just putting flaps on it!!!! Also, I want to keep the back of the boat flat so that it doesn't mess up my trolling wake. We've been really nailing the fish this week, I actually had my best fishing day of my career two days back, we had 6 black marlin and 20 sailfish, so I want to make sure we keep seeing those numbers!

For power, right now it has an older style mechanically injected cummins 5.9 6BTA-JWC 250hp. I'm saving up for a newer common rail 5.9 though, I am going to go with a 380hp. When I switch over the motor, I'm going to move it forward, junk all the drive train and go up to a 1 3/4 shaft that's longer and build a new guide. I think that'll give me a better shaft angle as well, and with the better angle will come less prop wash and vibration (there isn't really that much now, but less is always better) and hopefully even more bites. Been talking with a cummins guy in California and it seems the engine runs around 26K reman from cummins. We're also going to upgrade the transmission to a new twin disk, there is one that is a soft shift so it doesn't bump when you put it in gear. That transmission has the option of 50 rpm prop speed so I can slow troll bonita. All I need is to hit the powerball to pay for it all!!!!!
 
G
GringoJohn
On the electronics, I am actually putting a new furuno 1870 in it in about a week in the wood boat, it's sitting in customs now as they try to figure out what it is to charge me tax! Right now it's got a 12 year old Furuno GPS that is going strong, but I really like the newer processing on the newer sonars. The 1870 has the same processing that the 585 has, and I have a 585 in my 32 foot boat and it's amazing! On the panga, since it is an inshore fishing boat and they are always chasing sardines, we are going to get a garmin chirp with the SideVu so we can find the schools of bait faster. I really wish Furuno made a sideVu that was under 18K, and I figure the day after I guy the garmin they'll announce it!!! Evenutally I'd like to get a Furuno 25kw radar like I have on my 32 footer, but for now, they both have VHF's and the 32 footer just directs traffic out there letting these two boats know where the logs and spinner dolphins are. It works out pretty good though, and we have a nice pair of Fujinon's gyro stabilized binoculars that are pretty hard core on finding anything out there as well.
 
J
JeannaJigs
I will never whine about doing a restoration of my fiberglass drift boat again after seeing those pictures. Good riddance I hate working with fiberglass! Awesome work you did there!
 
G
GringoJohn
JeannaJigs said:
I will never whine about doing a restoration of my fiberglass drift boat again after seeing those pictures. Good riddance I hate working with fiberglass! Awesome work you did there!

Yeah, the wood is so much nicer because you never itch afterwards and the epoxy doesn't smell bad! I love working with fiberglass in molds and on the table, but when you start sanding that stuff, especially with the makita, that fiberglass dust is EVIL!:devilish:
 
Irishrover
Irishrover
Gettting that motor set to balance the boat is a much better idea than trim tabs. I have trim tabs on my boat but the motors are outboards. I didn't even think about the import tax you have to pay, boat are expensive enough with that. Furuno makes some great electronics a lot of the boats up here run with their radar. I went with all Lowrance on my new boat and was stunned by all the things that the new generation electronic can do. My old stuff was 15yrs pluss. I didn't get it but the side scan stuff is amazing. A smooth transmission is a good thing. On my last boat everyone in the marina new when I was coming back in or leaving just from the noise that occured when I put that boat in reverse!
 
G
GringoJohn
Irishrover said:
Gettting that motor set to balance the boat is a much better idea than trim tabs. I have trim tabs on my boat but the motors are outboards. I didn't even think about the import tax you have to pay, boat are expensive enough with that. Furuno makes some great electronics a lot of the boats up here run with their radar. I went with all Lowrance on my new boat and was stunned by all the things that the new generation electronic can do. My old stuff was 15yrs pluss. I didn't get it but the side scan stuff is amazing. A smooth transmission is a good thing. On my last boat everyone in the marina new when I was coming back in or leaving just from the noise that occured when I put that boat in reverse!

Yeah, I hate the kicking it in and out of gear and hearing the thud. Right now it's not super bad because this thing is pretty light and the prop isn't that big, but I like the idea of the slow start tranny. I hadn't even heard about it, but somebody on the hull truth sent me a link and it's a neat concept.

I have a nice 25kw furuno radar on my ocean master, and it's incredible. We have spotted big flocks of birds at 6 N miles, and have saved quite a few days of fishing with the radar. Lowrance has a nice radar as well, I've played with one of those and was equally impressed.

I really looked a lot at the lowrance side scan as well. They have a new 2nd generation that's supposed to be super nice and that just sounds like a logical idea looking out to the sides. a lot of people have said a lot of good things about the Lowrance/Simrad side scan. They also have a nice chirp sounder (for downlooking sonar) that they can ping the bottom at 10,000 feet that plugs into the same unit. I'm not sure how much deep dropping you guys do in Oregon, but it's just fun playing with expensive toys!!!

But for the side scan, i'm sold on the Garmin stuff. They are releasing a new chirp side scan (they call it SideVu) in February that can see 500 feet on either side of the boat, and for us that would work better than the 200 or so feet the non chirp side scan units see (although the resolution of the Lowrance side scan is amazing!). Garmin just bought a bunch of smaller sonar research companies (like interphase last year) and they should start being a major player in marine sonar. We'll see, every couple of years the technology really improves, it'll be really exciting to see what they come up with next....
 
Last edited:
G
GringoJohn
Here's a video of the radar finding birds on my 32 footer.
 
Irishrover
Irishrover
Great video......and great looking water.
 
E
eugene1
Gringo,

Looks like you did a great job on patching the girl back up! It takes time to restore a boat, but it's time well spent.

Sounds like the fishing is off the hook there, maybe next year we'll come see you instead of going to MX for sailfish.

Best,
 
G
GringoJohn
eugene1 said:
Gringo,

Looks like you did a great job on patching the girl back up! It takes time to restore a boat, but it's time well spent.

Sounds like the fishing is off the hook there, maybe next year we'll come see you instead of going to MX for sailfish.

Best,

This year has been really hot, last week, on this boat, I actually had my personal best day of fishing ever with 6 marlin and 20 sailfish. Couldn't get a ton of good Marlin pics, but I got a few and then a few sailfish pics as well. Check them out!

Really big one, but the shots didn't turn out great
122013marlina.jpg

122013marlinb.jpg

"Small" 100 pound striper
122013marling.jpg

Some sailfish shots:
122013marlinf.jpg

122013marlind.jpg

122013marline.jpg
 

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