0:00
What's up? We are back on the Ocean Master Project boat this week, and I want to show you one of the problems that we see pretty regularly when it comes to working on older boats
0:17
Sometimes this will happen with age, and like for our boat today, this will also happen a lot sooner when somebody gets in over their head and chooses not to install parts properly on their boat
0:28
Previously, someone has added some rodholders and when they did, they didn't use stainless steel hardware
0:34
which has created this nasty rustin that always appears on the gunnels whenever they get wet
0:39
Something else that they didn't do is that they didn't take the time to properly seal up the holes that were cut in the top cap of the boat
0:46
here where the wood was left exposed after they drilled them out
0:58
which has now rotted out the top cap woman where each of these rodholders are
1:06
And now they are super flimsy and won't take much pressure to rip out of the gunnels
1:11
So what we want to do is take all of these rodholders out and see how bad it is
1:16
This just requires us to take the bolts out and pull this wood out from under the gunwale
1:21
where they had put this Mickey Mouse backer plate in, and we can now see how bad the rod is of the wood that is between the bottom and top layer of fiberglass in the cap
1:36
Now because of the extent of the damage that has been done here, we really only have three options to fix this issue here today
1:43
The first one is going to be the best way but it will also take the most time and be the most expensive to do Though it is the right way to do it we won be doing it for this boat right now
1:59
And that would be for us to cut out the top cap of the gunnel here from the back of the boat
2:04
to about the middle of the boat or until we got to clean dry wood. We would want to cut it out
2:10
on the top to make it easier and we would stay about an inch or so inside from this rib here
2:15
on the inside of the cap and then from the curve of the edge of the cap on the outside
2:21
When you look under, you can see where the wood is glassed in and we would need to dig out all that wood
2:29
clean up the glass, replace it with some kusa board or new plywood
2:35
then re-glass it and just do a non-skid on the top of it once we got it done
2:40
Eventually we will have to do that to this boat, but we don't have the time for that type of project right now
2:45
now so we won't even begin to run down that rabbit hole. The next option, which is the second
2:51
best option, would depend on how bad the rod is. And what we would do would be to mix up some
2:57
epoxy resin and then mix up some silica with the epoxy to make a strong putty that we could
3:03
pack into the void that is left from the rotten wood. You would drill some holes in the cap and
3:08
push the mixture into the void, but again, this takes time and a lot more work than we have time for
3:13
right now. Plus, this has been like this for so long that the wood has rotten almost to the
3:19
back of the boat, probably well up towards the middle of the boat as well. So just packing the
3:24
void will not give it enough strength to be really trustworthy when you're talking about holding
3:28
a $500 to a $1,000 rod setup when you're trolling. So this leaves us with the third option
3:34
of just doing a better form of Mickey Mouseing this here problem. And we are going to be
3:39
utilizing our favorite material for Mickey Mouse repairs being some good old stuff If you unfamiliar with Starboard we covered this material in a previous video that we link to at the end of this video Now they had the right idea
3:53
with the wood on the bottom to use as a backing plate, they just didn't make the piece large
3:57
enough. The reason for the backing plate is to spread out the load that is put on the rod
4:02
holder or whatever you are trying to strengthen. Kind of like what we did for the subwoofer
4:07
that we installed here in the front of the console. Because of how thin the console is, have
4:12
Having the speakers in the subwoofer any other way would have just rattled the console to pieces and caused all kinds of stress cracks and other issues
4:20
So we made this backing piece out of starboard to strengthen the fiberglass where the sub is and to absorb the load and spread it out across the glass to prevent this
4:29
Now we are still working on getting the boat rewired, so if you haven't yet, subscribe to the channel because we'll be having some more electronics videos coming out by the end of the year
4:39
Back to our rod holder dilemma though, the backing plate isn't going to really fix our issue. Because of how rotted out the wood is, we've got this huge
4:47
void between the layers of glass. And if you just put the backing plate on, then the bolts would
4:52
just pull the entire rod holder through the top layer of glass, destroying the top part of the cap
4:57
and probably losing a rod if we were brave enough to leave it like that and use it. For a backing
5:03
plate, the longer it is, the better it will be. The bigger it is, the more surface area it will
5:08
have to spread out the stress put on it from when the rod takes a hit from a fish
5:13
So the biggest piece of starboard that we had was only able to cover about six inches
5:18
from the ends of both the rod holders. Of course it would be nice to be able to go a little further out, but this is the biggest
5:24
piece of scrap that we have to do this with, so it'll work just fine for our cheap Band-Aid
5:29
repair on our rotted gunel top cap. So what we will need to do next is eliminate this void so that we'll work just for our cheap bandaid repair on our rotted gunwagonal top cap
5:35
So what we will need to do next is eliminate this void so that whenever we bolt the rod holders down and through the backing plate the two layers of glass won be able to smash together and this
5:45
doesn't take much to do. All we are going to do here is cut up little pieces of starboard
5:51
scraps that are big enough to fill this void and allow us to drill through them where the bolts
5:56
need to go through. This will strengthen the matting surfaces between the top layer of glass
6:01
and the bottom layer of glass, just around where the face of the rod holder is going to
6:05
only be putting pressure and stress on it. This doesn't do much for the rest of the top cap to strengthen it, but again, this is just
6:12
a band-aid and our goal is to transfer the stress of the rod holder from the top to the bottom
6:18
being the backing plate that is absorbing all the force. Now once we have the void packed up and the holes drilled, we will seal up the top of the
6:28
gunwale, but we won't fill up and seal up the bottom because of how wet this is, we would
6:33
have to drill holes in the bottom of the cap in order to let all the water out. If we sealed this up
6:38
we would just trap all that water in there and it would never hold. But since we are just
6:43
Mickey Mouseing this anyway, this will allow the moisture that is left in the wood to have a way
6:47
out and sealing it from the top will prevent new water from being introduced into the gunwale
6:53
And now we still have some flex in the rod holder, but it's not going to rip out of the boat
6:58
and we've bought a few more years here before we have to take the time to really address this
7:03
issue and cut out the tops of the gunnels and put in some new Cusa
7:07
We'd like to hear from you in the comment section below on some of your old boat problems
7:12
Let us know what kind of Mickey Mouse stuff you've had to do. Don't forget to hit that like button for the YouTube algorithm and check us out at
7:19
born again boating.com. Here's some more of our other videos that you will find super interesting and we look
7:25
forward to seeing you again next week. Thank you
