Apparently subterranian termites can live on a boat. I found the colony in the spray foam around the fuel tank. The wood in the transom, engine compartment bulkhead, and engine stringer are destroyed. My question is how should I repair. There are four stringers across the bottom hull and one center engine stringer that is T-shaped tying to the keel. Currently, I have removed the transom wood below the outside stringers to the undisturbed and heavily resin soaked wood at the top of the bottom center two stringers near the keel(also mid way of the center engine stringer). Should I cut the engine stringer in half longitudinally, replace the wood, scarf the existing fiberglass and re-glass the top. I am leary of this as there would be a horizontal joint in the transom between the out side and inside stringers as well as midway through the engine stinger. My brain tells me I should rip out everthing, but I would have to glass the under side of the engine stringer as well as glass to the hull keel. How difficult is it to glass from underneath and will ripping everything out cause movement in the hull during replacement. The bulkhead is another story.

Just cut the topcap of and take a chainsaw and grind the wood out ,,leave the outsides (glass ) standing,make shure that u suport under the hull so u will not greate a hook in to the bottom .
After ground out, mix epoxy and paint the inside of the sides from left over stringer ,bond 2 -1/2 inch marine ply would or even 3/4 (depends on size of existing) together and putty in place, then glass the top over and you done.

Thanks for the quick post daredevil. This project started out small, but the digging keeps getting deeper.

IMO you should remove the entire sides and grind down to the bottom of the boat. Resin is NOT strong at all. If you do as above then I would be concerned with how you get a good bond between the wood and OLD glass. When I lay out laminations I try and keep them so that there is not a load of resin build up. I guess you could try and clamp the sides in but that seems like more work then just cutting it down to the bottom. If you look there is a thread about stringer replacement on the board some place that I have going on in my Formula.

Ditto, I'd cut the stringers completely out.

new guy here
im doing the same thing,gutting out stringers
question what is the best way to do the transom on a 34 scarab raider with 5 factory large transom knees?

i would laminate all my wood with three layers of 1/2" rather than the traditional two layers of 3/4". Stagger joints and use quality materials. 1808 Nytex and epoxy if the budget permits, otherwise a good quality laminating resin will be fine.

do you remove the transom knees?
or
to save time remove the outer skin?
this is an ouboard scarab raider
transom is 2and 3 quarters thick!!!!!!
the transom knees run from the botum up to the upper shelf crossmember.


thanks for feed back!!!!
i will post pics when i learn how

it depends on just how bad it is but it would be difficult to get around them (the knees) and still do a good solid job. Never ever remove the outer skin, if you are refering to the actual outer skin of the boat. All work must be done from inside the bilge. Its a tuffy but unfortunatly theres no easy way around it. In the end it really has to do with just how bad it is.

thanks again glass dave!!!