1972 Keel Up Restoration

I have a special place for classic Hydrodynes as I was in a ski show for 4 years in the mid 70's. I finally got one 2 years ago which looked really nice but the 1st time I put in the water it leaked. On the outside the transom looked good so the only culprit I could think of was the skeg. Sure enough when the boat was back on the trailer I could move the skeg and for the next 3 weeks the skeg leaked water on the garage floor. I knew I had a major problem so I ripped the floor out to see what the problem was and the problem was total rot of the core. I took out 4 floors! The 1st was the plywood floor and lo and behold there was a partially rotted second plywood floor. Someone tried to gold plate a cardboard box. After the second floor was removed I thought I was down to the core but when I removed that (I think it was pine - certainly not balsa) I found another layer of core which was balsa and I removed it all.

Pics to follow.

Question - Is the pine floor/second core over the balsa floor core normal?

All wood is removed and so is the deck. I have a fiberglass shell left and intend to use Coosa Bluewater 26 composit to replace the transom, stringers, knees, and floor. Oh and while I am at it I am widening the motor well to convert the boat to a twin rig.

 

That boat originally had an end grain balsa core, glassed in, then stringers, glassed in, and a plywood floor, glassed in. All the rest is back yard mechanic stuff.

jim

 

I just noticed that you have the deck off. That leaves nothing to hold the shape of the hull. I think you could temporarily attach the deck to hold the shape while you work on the transom and the core. If you don't, you may lose the hull shape while fitting the core and maybe not be able to refit the deck. The hull should be supported as completely as possible.

 

Yea I thought about that. There was a steel I beam just forward of the motorwell which I intend to replace with coosa to hold the shape of the hull in the stern. I did not think about the bow. A boat builder told me I should use the sides of the hull where it dips in to support the shell and get it off the trailer before I do any stringer or core work which makes sense to me. I will have to check the bottom of the hull for straightness.

Meanwhile the next step is to get a 1/2" coosa transom in and then turn my attention to the keel area where the skeg is. I intend to fill this area with glass and then a white cutting board from the kitchen. That is a composite answer to plywood that I can thru-bolt the skeg to. Then While the hull is still relatively light I can flip it and do the necessary sanding.

Any and all comments and suggestions will be appreciated - and thanks!

 

If a factory does work like that they put it back in the mold to properly support it. You need to make sure the planing area of the hull is kept straight. There have been some sad stories about hulls that are out of shape with serious performance problems.

jim

 

some pics... This is what I bought for $3200. Looks pretty nice right?

 

Then it started to sink and here is why... This is the skeg or fin or whatever you want to call it. As you can see after I took the boat out water was leaking out and staining the skeg and did for 3 weeks. Houston we have a problem. When I tried to move the skeg side to side it did. At that point I knew the keel was rotted and if the keel was rotted probably everything else too.

 

I then knew the only way to save this classic was to totally tear it apart to see what was going on under the floor. I totally stripped the boat - removed the motor, all fittings, fuel system, steering, gauges and everything else to bring it to a shell. Hard work and boring so no pics. This is what I found...

 

At this point I had already removed 2 plywood floors to get to what you see. The stringers are gone and I have what I thought was only the core left. Wrong! What you see in this poorly focused pic is the pine(?) core added over the original balsa core.

 

What a project this is turning out to be and if I didnt love Dynes the way I do I would probably give it up at tis point. But I knew there only had to be one more layer of BS before I got to the shell. So I drove on..