Thompson Repair

The boat we affectionately call "The Thompson" is a 14' Thompson runabout, built in 1962, powered with a 40hp Evinrude engine.

In 2008 while cruising on Lake Austin, we incurred the following damage. Other than one or two large waves, I had no idea anything had happened till we had pulled the boat out of the water. I was going back to take one more picture, and noticed the spot on the bottom....

The damage occurred where the plywood for the bottom panel was scarfed. For "whatever reason", the top panel would be pointing in an "unfortunate direction" if it popped up. When it did, it was ripped away.

Fortunately, only the top most ply of the panel was removed. The boat was stripped (removed the engine, windshield, hardware, etc...), and then flipped over. Since it was time for the bottom to be repainted anyway, the entire bottom was sanded. The damaged area was filled with fiberglass layers and lots of epoxy.

I then tried something different and perhaps blasphemous: I covered the bottom with cloth.

Previously, the boat was simply wood construction - a plywood panel on the bottom, but plywood lap strakes on the side. These were bolted together with about 1500-2000 brass machine screws with brass nuts on the inside.

The boat leaked like a sieve.

After a fair amount of worry, and much hand-wringing, I finally decided that I would cover the bottom of the boat with Xynol and epoxy. Turns out the Xynol worked GREAT. Yes, it was still a pain - but it conformed completely to the complicated shape of the laps. I used one large piece on each side of the boat, overlapped at the keel. The other REALLY nice thing about the xynol is that when you sand it - you don't get glass fibers in your hands! It's MUCH nicer to work with than glass. The down side is that if you sand through the epoxy and into the fibers, the fibers "fluff up", and you have to almost over-cover the area again with epoxy or filler to get it smooth.

Here's the boat being rolled over:

Here's the bottom after sanding:

Here's the patched area after routing out the rough, torn edges, sanding, filling with epoxy and fiberglass to bring back up to the same level as the rest of the boat:

And eventually - back in the water:

If you look really closely, you might be able to tell that the motor isn't the original Evinrude. By this time, I had determined that I wanted to build a boat from scratch. There were a couple of problems with the Thompson:

1) The motor was old enough that it was now in an "iffy" state.

2) The leaking had been a significant concern - though that was now solved.

3) Every time I took it out, I felt like I was taking a huge risk with "the family heirloom". I didn't want anything to go wrong "on MY watch".

The first step to building a new boat from scratch was to acquire a motor. By buying a NEW motor - I kinda' was making the mental leap of committing myself to the new boat. And in the mean time, I'd make good use of it on the Thompson...

This new motor would next go on Mischief.