syclone

Mid last year, a friend of mine took me for a ride in his boat (Formula 206 w/ 496HO) on our local river (Danube, that is). Until then I couldn´t really see the appeal of going up and down the river a dozen times for no apparent reason.
Now I can.
Although there is no reason to do it; it is simply unnecessary, but...fun.

So I had to get a boat.

2 weeks later I found a ´95 Scarab 22 on the internet and one more week later we picked her up in Italy and brought her home.
The boat was fun to drive and went about 57mph with its stock carbureted 350 MAG with an Alpha drive. Compression was a little low on 2 cylinders, what gave me reason to completely redo the boat over the winter.
Here´s the story and some pics, which robyw1 encouraged me to post here.

Now that was what the boat looked like when we took it in the shop in september ´03, side panel already off, engine and drive out.

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The rubrail was pretty bad looking, so we started taking it off. As soon as we had most of the screws out, the hull-deck seam seemed a little, well, unstable, and after we took the rest of the screws out (the ones that are supposed to hold the two together), the hull and deck pretty much fell apart, even without cutting the sealer.

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Ten minutes later, this started to become a real project:

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The center bulkhead was broken and showed the bad quality of the wood Wellcraft must have used (I guess someone has hopped on the deck and broke the bulkhead, but the wood was lousy, anyway).

Peeling the carpet off

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Then the first glitches in the construction showed, such as the laminate not being in contact with the core, cracks, and (as found in many other places on the entire hull), dry fibers

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My favorite example on the bad craftsmanship on this boat and, as I am sure, the reason for the Scarab rotted transom problem. The way the transom was put in is incredible: not sqaure in any direction, lots of dry fibers and a serious gap between the laminate and the wood. Together with the leaking hull-deck seam, it was obvious how the water gets in: every time you get the boat off plane and the water catches you from behind, it enters the area below the swim platform and runs down the gaps aroud the transom. And stays there: transom rots.

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Empty bilge (of course)

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I have seen pics of a guy lying under a boat to restore the surface (sanding and spraying). not my preferrd working posture, especially for sanding (which I hate anyway). So we had to come up with something more sophisticated....hmm...why not turn the hull around?
Great idea, so we needed a fixture first:

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Then we went to the car lift for the rear and an engine lifter (cherry picker, I guess it is called) and started to lift the damn thing up

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Thats when the rear started to slide off the lift. PANIC...
Emergency welding required