This guy might be able to help... Post is from 2010, but it talks about re-hulling a
gulfstar.
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...tml#post387293
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...tml#post442734
I honestly don't know, other than
money... Why you couldn't have the
hull peeled down where ever the
delamination stops and then
fiberglass back alternating layers of mat and roving, effectively just building another boat around your boat.
This isn't brain surgery, buts it is a lot of
work... It is not uncharted engineering territory. The loads are there, but you can also
work off a suggested laminate schedule in any number of
trade publications, and pull in a laminate
engineer to ease your mind. Naval architects aren't laminate engineers, nor are most surveyors... nor are most boat builders which is why these problems arise. There is an element of cut and try, where a 1/4 inch is to thin for a bayliner ski boat, unless its a Ultra Light
Displacement Olson on its way to
hawaii. Some boats (Pacemakers) have 1 inch thick bottoms for the sake of having 1 inch thick bottoms and having a heavy smooth ride.
In the days of yore, we'd look at Skenes book of Yacht Design to figure what was field tested to use in a boat our size. Nowadays we can lean on David Gerr's
books to guide us. You can call up VectorPly or 3A Composites and get something engineered, with load paths and overlap distances.
Polyester would be fine, and woven roving and stitch mat would make the job fairly mundane or at least less Messy.
Most of the cost would be in fairing it out. If your expectations were not yacht like reflection and an eggshell flat
paint then it wouldn't have to spend the months fairing it.
Your best bet would be to get in touch with a custom boat yard like Merrit down in
Florida that does big, custom,
fiberglass boats and see if they would be interested...
Merritt's Boats and Engine Works - About Us
Merritt's Boats and Engine Works - About Us their 86...
Another that could handle you would be thunderbolt in
georgia:
Thunderbolt Marine Inc
Other than that, its a rough mix of finding the right yard that knows what to do... that also has the space to do it, and is willing to take it on in polyester. Its not "thinking" work other than getting it blocked solid and building a
cradle so she holds her shape.. Its the kind of work that has a high turn over for your labor! Everyday you basically throw away your clothes.
Smaller yards have a hard time with that size job because they have to turn away jobs while you use their labor, and have a hard time bidding the time it will take because its a bigger job than they normally bid... They come in low, and have to feed their workers, and the
price goes up. That is why the smaller yards turn you away, as they have to wrestle with their conscience of a walk off for 1 big job worth the pay of 10 other ones.
It takes 4 guys at the least to do the job the old fashioned way with a wet out bench, a roll of PVC pipe and some weights to hang the fiberglass cloth over the side and a whole lot of
paint buckets and rollers/roller frames.
If the laminate isn't porous, a more modern shop could do a vacuum infusion over the
hull and reduce some of the labor. The Boat Smith Guys down in Florida might have some
advice on labor in SC and will know how to do the job as they build in polyester. There isn't much different between building a custom 50 foot hull from scratch, from the work you need done.
BoatSmith
Whatever the case, bid the job as close to fixed cost as you can get it. Find your
marine surveyor to
broker the job and verify that everything goes smoothly... If the guys your surveyor take you to make the short hairs curl up on the back of your neck, fire your surveyor and don't take your boat there. Find another surveyor until you are certain you aren't a 60 minutes story, and then go and ask to see the boats that have been built/repaired and meet/talk to the owners without the yard guys there. The folks with bottomless pockets can say "They are expensive but I get absolutely what I want..." The same yard can generate a horror story of evaporated life savings, from those with lesser means... You need to talk to enough customers to hear both sides.
Most of these yards you should be able to buy the labor at $20 or so an hour, and $40 for a spray hand for paint if you do your horse trading right... The guys doing this type of work aren't making close to that, and this is a big enough job that the yard can keep the lights on and people around. We are in a pretty decent recession... Quite a few big
motor yacht and sport
fishing guys are opening up to work on trawlers and sailboats just to keep the lights on.
If you have to, flat
bed truck the boat to somewhere "Safe" the transport and crane
fees are the cheapest
money you will spend. These sorts of jobs can spiral into a blank check. Don't let it... There should be a fixed cost to peel it, and everything else is per pound weights for resin and cloth. Labor and
sanding discs are on the boat yard, but you yourself and surveyor can get fairly close once you know what laminate schedule you want going back onto the boat.
The labor should be around a month to peel it and assess the damage and generate a
game plan. This should involve multiple bids for materials. Eastern Burlap out of Virginia deserves a call. 4 guys should take about a month to get it back structurally sound. IF the guys are good, then 2 months to get it fair... If they aren't, then 6 months and a whole boat load of fillers and primers to get it painted. In fairing, 4 good guys do the work of 4 good guys. If the work is bad, then 4 guys work a lot and 1 guy fixes and finishes it.
I would try to get the job re-gelcoated. Gel coat makes good high build primer, Good vinylester
Gelcoat keeps
blisters from happening.
The rest of this is a crash course, mostly having to do with fairing. You won't get what you put back into it out. You won't get what you bought it for back out if the boat looks like its had major surgery and was put back together by hacks.
I would mandate that Ashland or CCP resins and vinylester gelcoats, with the outermost layer being ounce and a half mat, in vinylester before the gel coat goes on. That is the blister barrier... and in the scale of the job would be within a few hundred dollars. I would have it faired with a pre-made fairing compound. Adtech makes some good polyester products, as well as ATC Polyfair. You'll probably go through 15 gallons to get it smooth... If your yard hand mixes Qcells, microballons or the like, or worse yet cabosil then you are liable to spend the next millenia in the fairing stage. Its
cheap on materials, but hard on labor as the densities are different every mix. You end up with soft material beside hard material, that is all softer than the fiberglass it is supposed to bury. Bury meaning, that the fiberglass is hidden under the fairing filler until the boat turns one solid color.
They should make templates and gauges of the hull now, scribed to fit perfectly on 12 inch centers. Those templates should be set against the hull when the time comes to start fairing, and packed up full of goo until a perfect vertical stripe is set in place. The stripe should be painted, and then battens should be wrapped around the hull and filler applied using the vertical stripes as a guide. The hull should be hand sanded with foot long boards until the paint is taken off the vertical stripes, and the battens should fit perfectly to the surface with no air space visible. Then spray high build primer repeatedly until you get the desired finish...
The alternate method is to start with the battens and pull the hull, but this involves chasing your tail.
Another method is to apply putty everywhere and sand everywhere, forever. If they pick up a tube of 3M Acryl White, take the boat away from them before the
gelcoat goes on.
There are boat painters, and boat fairers. Lots of people can take a fair boat and paint it... much fewer people can take a boat that looks like a gravel parking lot and make it slick like a bowling ball.
If you go
epoxy and biaxial glass, then hold your hat... Quite a few more boat yards would be proficient but your materials bill is going to be extreme, the labor will go up as well because of the slower application and curing time. Polyester you can get two or more layers on in a day where
epoxy you get one... Polyester you can sand and fill twice an hour during the fairing stage, epoxy you get to apply once a day.
If you chose to awlgrip it, fair it in polyester and gelcoat it... Paint it black with
cheap paint and let it sit in the sun making sure to turn it so both sides get the same amount of sun for a year. That will post cure the fillers, and fiberglass so that you don't pay for an awlgrip job that looks quite wavy and different next year.
Zach