Project Thread: Fixing up hull #37831

nickzup

Member
Last summer, I bought hull #37831 and decided to spend my time sailing the boat in lieu of some much needed TLC. I've posted a few threads (and read through a good many more) in preparation for this work, and I can't thank the members of this forum enough for the kind advice and for sharing your experiences. Living three hours from where I keep the boat in Michigan, I've finally found an unencumbered week to get started on the work there. I wanted to document the project in this thread to keep track of triumphs and failures and ask questions as they arise.

Hull #37831 (name TBD) is a 1966 boat that has had quite a bit of work done to it over the years, and is need of a little love now. I'll break it down into the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good: I got a great deal on a complete boat. It came with all the rigging, centerboard, new-style rudder upgrade with a like-new tiller assembly, a reasonably clean and crispy sail, a mast-up Sunbrella cover, and a Dynamic (I think) beach dolly. The dolly alone is worth more than I paid for the whole kit. The bones of the boat are solid, with no signs of previous major repairs, no deep scratches or gouges in the underside, and no leaks when on the water. It floats and came ready to sail, and that already makes it a 10/10 in my book :D.

The Bad: The mast tube has a leak in it, and the hull fills with water if left covered outside. As a result, hull was full of water when I bought it, and the boat was on the heavy side. I cut a second inspection port and have been drying it out since around October. I wasn't able to weigh it beforehand, but it seems to be approaching a more manageable weight. I'll be fixing the mast tube leak as part of this project, since I plan on storing the boat covered outdoors in the summer.

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The Ugly: Previous owners did a horrendous topside paint job. The slathered it over pretty much everything, including the factory serial plate. From what I can tell where the paint is peeling away, it looks like they applied paint directly on top of oxidized gelcoat without any surface prep. Additionally, the coaming could use some love, and they slathered on some fairing compound over the well for the old-style rudder components when they did that job.

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The plan is simple: get the topside up to standards! Going to leave the bottom as-is, maybe some light wet sanding to spruce up the gelcoat, but at the end of the day, this is a pleasure boat, not a racer, and it'll probably be beached from time to time. My plan for the week is to sand off the old paint and see what we're working with as far as the gelcoat goes. If it can be saved, I'll go ahead and wet-sand and polish it up as best I can. If it can't, going to move forward with a proper topcoat paint job in May when I'll have time to do it right from start to finish. Compared to some of the project boats I've seen y'all complete, I think this one should be fairly manageable, but you never know what you'll run into. I'll post updates on this thread as I work through everything.
 
Spent about an hour sanding paint off of half of the bow. The going is slow, even with 60 grit paper, and I learned I need to change to fresh paper more often than I thought. I noticed some areas of pale yellow poking through as I sanded (red region), and it looks like fresh gelcoat! Also noticed a few areas that look like they may have been touched up with fairing compound (blue regions) before painting. Hard to say for sure before I keep on sanding, but encouraging so far. Would love to be able to completely restore the original gelcoat, but would be convenient to have most of the fairing done if I end up having to paint. In the meantime, I have a LOT of sanding ahead!


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‘66 was a great year! You’ve got a solid boat and you’re doing the necessary work to prep it.
I think priming and painting the deck will be the way to go. You may find that splashguard (coaming) hard to reattach without rivnuts or the proper size rivets, but that will be about the last thing you do.
If your mast step is leaking you’ll want to visually inspect it (use a flashlight) and fill any chips with thickened epoxy. Tape a small brush to a paint stick and ‘paint’ some epoxy to the bottom of the mast tube and sides, if needed. Not too thick or you’ll be sanding there, too- gotta fit the mast in the hole! Be sure your mast base has the plastic end cap.
Do a proper leak test on the whole boat before you paint.
 
‘66 was a great year! You’ve got a solid boat and you’re doing the necessary work to prep it.
I think priming and painting the deck will be the way to go. You may find that splashguard (coaming) hard to reattach without rivnuts or the proper size rivets, but that will be about the last thing you do.
If your mast step is leaking you’ll want to visually inspect it (use a flashlight) and fill any chips with thickened epoxy. Tape a small brush to a paint stick and ‘paint’ some epoxy to the bottom of the mast tube and sides, if needed. Not too thick or you’ll be sanding there, too- gotta fit the mast in the hole! Be sure your mast base has the plastic end cap.
Do a proper leak test on the whole boat before you paint.

Thanks for the advice! Coaming appeared to be attached with brass inserts of some kind and stainless screws. Don't know if they're factory, my guess is they are new(er) since nothing was seized up and the coaming came off easily. One less thing to worry about.

A leak test is definitely in order, I'll have to get my hands on a compressor.
 
The stainless screws are original. Removing them is easy, but re-using them is the issue. How do you get nuts on the ends? You can get to a few by reaching in through the port you’ve added, but most are out of reach. That’s why you’ll need rivnuts and a rivnut gun (not cheap- borrow one) or use the rivets, as I did, but it means filling those holes as part of your prep before painting, then drilling smaller holes to accept the rivet. I’ve attached a couple of pics of one of my flips to help show what I mean.
Notice that I removed all the aluminum trim- leaks at the seams are common- and painting is easier and better quality.
Don’t use a compressor! You’ll pop a seam or detach a block with too much pressure in the hull. Watch Signal Charlie’s YouTube videos and search ‘leak test’ on this site. You only need soapy water, a spray bottle and a bike pump or inflatable mattress pump or similar, held slightly away from deck drain hole. A helper makes it easier with a second pair of hands and a second pair of eyes to look for bubbles
 

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I appear to have gotten lucky, previous owner seems to have installed brass rivnuts (didn't know that's what they were called, learn something new every day :)) last time they took the coaming off. They were pretty filthy, but I sanded one a bit so I could get a better look at it and see what it was made of. You scared me for a second, as I didn't remember hearing any nuts dropping inside of the hull when I took it off. Thought I was gonna have to go digging around to recover them! Glad someones else went through the trouble and expense already.

Thanks for the note on air compressor, I'll have a look at that video and give it a shot. I should have everything I need to do that when the time comes.

I appreciate the help!

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Nice boat, a great time for Alcort when they had 6+ years under their belt hand laying fiberglass and hand pouring the interior adhesive foam. We love those hulls from the mid 60s til late 70s, they are almost bullet proof.
 
Getting ready to call it a week and head back south. Never seems to be enough time in a week to do everything, and I ended up spending more time with hanging out with friends up here than working on the boat. Wouldn't change a thing, but still a lot of sanding ahead.

I ended up getting just over half of the old paint removed. At first I was just using the little bag on the sander to collect the dust, but ended up hooking up our shop vac, which kept the paper from clogging and sped things up tremendously. Biggest killer was wearing out the 60 grit sanding pads, which I ended up running out of. Feel like I've made enough progress and learned enough to make the rest of this project run smoothly.

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Sanding has revealed the typical scratches of a well-loved and oft-sailed vessel, especially where the tiller arm would rub on the deck. It doesn't look like any fairing compound was used, just paint. Might explain why they laid it on so thick. Taking all this into account, I'll definitely be moving forward with primer and top paint. I am wondering how far I will have to sand past just removing the paint before I can apply primer and move on from there. Would appreciate any recommendations. As of now, the areas I've sanded are very smooth and don't seem to require additional sanding.

Then there's the question of the color. I really wanted to do a Flag Blue topcoat to match our pontoon boat, but am heeding the warnings of this getting too hot in the sun. Is it as bad as people say? I'm now leaning towards a gray of some kind. I really like what @signal charlie used on VIPER, and am thinking about using that color on top along with blue/white bow stripes, and perhaps a pop of color in the sail. Only thing I know for sure is I don't want to keep it yellow.

Had one one thing go pretty squarely wrong that I'll now need to address. I decided to remove most of the deck fixtures to make it easier to sand. All of the backing blocks are in place and in good shape, so I felt comfortable doing this carefully. Unfortunately, when removing the deck cleat, both screws broke off in the hole. Must have been corroded, because it was a pretty meager amount of force that did it. I'm leaning toward filling the old holes in with fairing compound and just drilling new holes a few centimeters over for the cleat after I paint. Is there anything wrong with this approach? Open to suggestions if there are any.

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Finally, I think I've finally decided on a name: she'll be called ZEPHYR. Seemed appropriate for a casual boat that'll spend most days chasing light winds. Spent a particularly cold night drawing up some decals that I'll put in vinyl on the sides and/or transom.

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That's all for now! Currently planning on doing the actual painting in May when things warm up. Sanding will get done some time before then, just not sure when I'll be up next. Really happy with this boat so far, I know the finished result will be worth it.
 
Sand until smooth. Fair where needed. Pick a primer maker that matches your paint.

We used TotalBoat WetEdge Kingston Grey. The Flagship Blue stripes would coordinate with your pontoon.
 
Sand until smooth. Fair where needed. Pick a primer maker that matches your paint.

We used TotalBoat WetEdge Kingston Grey. The Flagship Blue stripes would coordinate with your pontoon.

Thanks! I was going to go with with Interlux Brightside, but it looks like I could pick up a pint WetEdge in Flag Blue just to do the stripe. I'll probably go with WetEdge to save some money, don't want to buy a whole quart of Brightside just for the accents. Any huge difference in quality of product between the two?

I wanted to get an idea of what this all looked like, so threw together a couple of drawings. Would either just do the blue stripes over the gray, or one wide blue stripe and white vinyl.

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Added the Word doc in case anyone wants to try out color combos for their own projects.
 

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Wow they both look great. Might see what it looks like with a blue coaming on the lower image.

We have used both Interlux and Wet Edge with excellent results.
 
Thanks! I was going to go with with Interlux Brightside, but it looks like I could pick up a pint WetEdge in Flag Blue just to do the stripe. I'll probably go with WetEdge to save some money, don't want to buy a whole quart of Brightside just for the accents. Any huge difference in quality of product between the two?

I wanted to get an idea of what this all looked like, so threw together a couple of drawings. Would either just do the blue stripes over the gray, or one wide blue stripe and white vinyl.

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Added the Word doc in case anyone wants to try out color combos for their own projects.


If the combing is white, I’d go with the white inset stripe to tie it all together. With no white in the deck, the combing might seem a bit unfinished/slapped-on.
 
Alcort tended to go with a deck color, then another color for stripes, coaming and sometime cockpits. But make it your own, there are plenty of white Sunfish out there.

Racing Stripes!! 1968. We copied and added stripes on the back also.

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Thank you both for the input. Second option definitely looked better with blue coaming, but I think I'm gonna end up going with option 1. Boat has a white sail, and when I eventually replace it, I think I'm going to stay with a white sail from Intensity. Hard to beat their price for a casual boat. I think the combo should tie in together nicely.

Alternatively, could go the complete opposite direction... I might have to save the Seafoam for the next project.

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Thanks for the advice! Coaming appeared to be attached with brass inserts of some kind and stainless screws. Don't know if they're factory, my guess is they are new(er) since nothing was seized up and the coaming came off easily. One less thing to worry about.

A leak test is definitely in order, I'll have to get my hands on a compressor.
Use a shop vac. Suck or blow. The deck to hull joint probably leaks. There is a thread on this site for that repair. I would use Awl Grip paint.
 

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