New member restoring 15' powercat, transom and hull overhaul

[elwesso]

Hey guys, great forum here.. I have spent a bit of time reading through previous posts on here, as well as other places on the internet. Looks like great information!

I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post in....

Anyway, my winter pet project is restoring this '64 powercat, its been sitting outside for about 30 years since it was last used.. I am intending on doing a full restoration on it to get it back to its glory days.. Without going into a lot of history on the boat, here is what I am intending on doing.

Ive done a bit of research on the powercats, and it appears the only strutctural things I have to worry about are replacing the rotten plywood in the transom and the hulls, so that is the first thing for me to look at..

I already have the deck and the hull mostly separated, so I am ready to start digging out the old transom and hull materials..

The research I've done shows that some of the "pourable type" transom materials seem to be better than plywood, and overall a simpler solution.. The products Ive heard of are the Seacast product, as well as the NidaCore product...

The fact is this boat was originally built as a racer, so the idea of something thats lighter, stronger, and inpervious to moisture is very appealing, not to mention it seems to be much simpler than forming a piece of plywood and glassing it back in..

It appears to me that the hull of the boat is in pretty good shape, the glass seems to be in good shape, and theres no abrasions or major hull damage, so it *appears* that once the transom and hulls are replaced, that should be about all it needs other than some fresh paint..

My plan right now is to use one of these pourable transoms.. I will remove the inner skin, which is really just the sprayed on fiberglass (the term escapes me), so I'll dig the old transom out from the inside and put in place something on the inside to cast the new transom..

The same idea goes for the floor.. Seacast also makes a self leveling floor compound which would be great, because I would dig up the old plywood in the hulls and just let it sit, and that would be done..


Thanks in advance for any advice!!!

[Lurvio]

Could you scale down the pictures to something like 800x600 pixels. It's a pain to try and read a post like this. Any image editing software can to this, MS Paint, Gimp etc.

Lurvio

[elwesso]

I just took the pics down, here are the direct links to them so they are not embedded in the post.

http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20002.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20003.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20004.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20005.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20006.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20007.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20008.jpg
http://www.q45.org/wespics/092410%20009.jpg

Engines:

http://www.q45.org/wespics/1_0.jpg

[War Whoop]

Sir those boats had great racing background,I would never use a pour-able in it when there are many other options,Like high density foams such as coosa board and some west system epoxy which is sold everywhere. There were 4 variants of the powercat I think.

standard non stepped twin hull catamaran

standard non stepped trimaran

Three Point hydro

four point Hydro cat.

[elwesso]

Thank you for your reply!! So basically you are suggesting that is superior to use another core material like high density foam or coosa board....

I would appreciate any other insights.

[War Whoop]

Originally Posted by elwesso

Thank you for your reply!! So basically you are suggesting that is superior to use another core material like high density foam or coosa board....

I would appreciate any other insights.

Exactly, that is a old boat and would use Epoxy on the rebuilding job,I mentioned West Systems, they have a website where you can get info.