Rough 1993 Ski soft floor

That crack in the floor is about where I keep my anchor. Maybe that's how it got there?

Seeing water that close to the surface means there will be more below. Don't give yourself a coronary though.

Here's what I'd do for both of these threads/boats assuming you have winter on the way:

I would carefully support the boat on 4 or 5 points paying special attention to leveling the mains. The 5th point would be under the keel towards the front.

Then I'd measure eveything and maybe make some templates so I could put everything back where it goes. From there, cut the floor out with a cut-off tool or a small circular saw set shallow and cut the floor out and remove the wet foam. I'd be very careful not to cut into the framework below.

After all is cleaned up and prepped for new material(and assuming the structural parts are still structural), pour in the foam-level it, and put in a new floor. The key here is to make the new floor water tight and tough enough to take some abuse.

Of course it's more complicated for an open bow, and I left out some details. All in all though, this should be much easier than a full stringer job.

And yes, the floor is structural. It ties the boat together above the lower structure.

eric lavine wrote: Greg, there is no way possible to make these floors water tight

Call me foolish, but I'm not willing to concede that yet. We'll see when I cut back into mine.

I'm going to dig into this area that I discovered and see what I find. I'm feeling better today after sleeping on it. It is just foam and fiberglass. I'll work on supporting the boat better (more evenly) and start cutting away. It will feel great when this is done and I KNOW that the boat is solid and dry underneath.

to many variables on a boats history, i probably was refering to some of these 100 hour a year boats, weighed down, left out in the rain and never having the drain plug pulled....from what Ive seen it would be the majority.
someone pulled a boo boo in for a second go around, I watered my asphalt draining it for about 20 minutes...those are the ones im talking about

storm34, this is a good point. I showed the problem to my mom yesterday and she said, "Well, good thing you found out now when it is easy to get to." Moms are so smart. :)

Kevin, I'm afraid you are entering uncharted territory (at least I've not seen this done yet.)

There are a few diagrams from the 39 brochure I believe, but nothing substantial.

As mentioned above, it should be a relatively quick process to take the old floor up, remove the foam and get the new stuff back in the boat. If you haven't had any experience with glass before it's a really simple process.

storm34, thanks! I had not seen that.

I'm into it now. Of course, I'm now thinking about the foam/no-foam issue. If I leave the foam out of my boat, how do I lay the floor back down? Doesn't the fiberglass need to "lay" on something to set up flat? Also, for anybody who has ever taken the foam out of their boat can you tell me if it is louder? I know that seems like a strange question, because boats are just noisy objects to begin with, but I'm curious. I'm leaning towards putting foam back in. My boat will never sit out in the rain or stay on the water for months unless I suddenly become rich and buy a home on a lake.

Of note, not all of the foam is wet. The top 2" is wet, but down near the hull some of the foam really seems to just be dry. I'm definitely pulling out a lot of wet foam, but not ALL of it is wet.

Good news: I found a trailer. Going to go pick it up in a couple of weeks. :)

you could laminate the floor over a glass like hassbeen showed on his build and then attach it to the boat.

Kevin,

That is a new one for me, from what i saw underneath mine the floor looked flat. Just layed on top of the stringers, however i did not dig as aft as you.

Kevin this picture from the 97 brochure which shows the jig holding the stringers in place gives you a bit of an idea what is below the floor. Aussie also found some cross bracing between the stringers. Get some pictures while you have the foam out.

Here is the hole I have cut in my boat floor in search of wet foam under the crack that had been created by the seat frame.



I poked my camera down in the cut out. This is what the view looks like looking forward towards the bow. The "ridge" on the right (looks like it is in the center in this photo) is attached to the floor. It is sort of an upside-down U, although I can't get to the other side of the U because of the frame (wall on the right).



This is looking aft. You can see the ridge here on the left. You'll also see on the right the front end of a composite stringer. More on that in a second. You can also see a ridge right in front of you that runs side to side, and there is a thick section of floor just aft of that ridge.

Any thoughts about what I should do next? I'm thinking of trying to chip out as much foam as I can from here going aft and see if the floor gets "thin" again at some point. I will keep plugging away going forward as well and hope to find only dry foam or the bow of my boat at some point.

The hard part is that I don't know where else I should dig now. I have other spots where the floor flexes. Should I cut in there and see what I find or ignore it?

By the way, once I scrape away the foam the glass looks good. It is glass after all, so it can say wet forever with no ill effects.

Just to be clear, my main concern is that I don't know if I should venture into this floor too much with all these ridges and thick areas. What if that thick area is honeycomb or something like that? I'd hate to slice into that.

I also created a picture with more explanation of what you are looking at.

A gardening spade sounds like a really good idea! Thanks for that.

This crack was the only area where there was an open wound in the floor. The other holes we all there only for screws, and they had screws in them so I am assuming that most of those didn't let water in.

I finally got a chance to dig into my foam a little more tonight. It's kind of weird and I'm looking for more thoughts from the experts here. The foam is wet, but not soaked. Is ANY wet foam bad? I'm beginning to wonder if this is worth the effort. The foam is still rigid and is quite hard to dig out because I'm working in such a small area.

The floor in my boat appears to be quite thick in many places. There are 3" disks (for lack of a better word) where the floor is thin. The problem is that there is no way I could dig out all the foam with a tiny three-inch hole as my access point.

Do I need to go after ALL the water? If the foam is still rigid, but still wet, is that a real problem?

Wow. That's an interesting idea. I don't think you'd ever get all the water doing that, and it might take a really long time since the water essentially leeches very slowly in the foam. Still, it might be worth a try just to see what happens.