CONTINUOUSWAVE

I may buy a 1999 GUARDIAN 25. The story is the same old one: used hard and put away wet.

I’d walk if this boat were a run-of-the-mill production boat. This GUARDIAN is unique; it has a dive door and many options. The boat may possibly be worth the brain damage [perhaps a metaphor for the substantial work needed to restore the boat that might cause harm to the restorer?].

There are wide and deep spider cracks everywhere—a credit card would fit into some gaps. I see lots of threads on repairing spider cracks—[the work] looks horrible. At least these are so wide I won’t have to Dremel many of them.

Q1: How does the military cause this [type of damage to a well-made boat]?

I’d expect the cracks would be around the towing, bar but they’re randomly everywhere.

I don’t want to fill in all the cracks, and then have them reappear again.

The damage is all over the boat; it looks like a construction fault, more than what someone could do to the boat.

There is a huge, wide, and deep crack from an impact across at least half the transom. The crack looks old, too, and there certainly must have been lots of water intrusion.

Q2: Does a GUARDIAN 25 boat use any wood in the construction of the transom?

Q3: Or elsewhere?

Q4: Should the hull be examined for retained moisture (in order to determine if embedded wood needs to be replaced)?

The GUARDIAN 25 has a massive below deck hold under the console, but it can only be accessed from a tiny port in front of the console.

Q5: What can that space be used for?

Q6: Could the bottom of the center console be cut out to make a walk-in head?

Thank you brain trust.

Cosmetic problems like gelcoat spider cracks would not concern me as much as potential structural [damage] in the transom given that’s where a lot of weight and torque resides.

Post photos.

If water got into the hull and the hull were in a climate where freezing occurs, then expanding ice can do internal damage.

Welldan18650 wrote:Q1: How does the military cause this [sort of damage to a well made boat]?

For a fiberglass hull boat in use by the military there is probably not a sense of ownership felt by the military people who use the boat. They probably are only aboard the boat for some training exercises, and then go on to something else.

The significant damage to the transom of the boat suggests it perhaps was involved in some sort of collision or grounding or something quite forceful. From a military perspective the boat is replaceable or expendable, but the personnel are not. Perhaps there was some event in the history of that hull in which damage to the full had to occur in order to complete the mission. The military does not keep a 25-foot Boston Whaler hull covered and protected, with its hull getting detailed, polished, finished with a micro-polish, waxed, and put away indoors for ten months of the year like a boat show queen.

Perhaps after that transom damage occurred the boat was taken out of service and just sat unattended. Then it was sold by the government. The formal name for those sales are surplus property disposal sales, which is a good description of the boat as far as the government was concerned: it was surplus property to be disposed. And it is a 22-year-old fiberglass boat that was probably subjected to very hard use. Even if some maintenance group cared for it as best possible, there would still be a lot of miles on that hull.

Welldan18650 wrote:I’d walk if this boat were a run-of-the-mill production boat. This GUARDIAN is unique; it has a dive door and many options. The boat may possibly be worth the brain damage [perhaps a metaphor for the substantial work needed to restore the boat that might cause harm to the restorer?].

I took the liberty of explaining parenthetically what I interpreted you comment about "worth the brain damage" as a metaphor, and a particularly good one, in my opinion, because repair of fiberglass boats generally does involve some exposure to toxic compounds, such a fiberglass dust, epoxy resins, bottom paint residues, and so on.

About the only way to justify the amount of work needed to restore this boat--which sound like it will be considerable--would be to compare the purchase price--which I assume would be very modest--to the cost of a new boat of this sort. I can only image how much a new GUARDIAN 25 would cost now, if they are even still being made. I suspect it would be several hundred thousand dollars at a minimum.

Thank you for the objective replies. Ok my real question. Sorry it got lost in my long post.

Is there wood in the transom?

A Guardian 25 with a dive door is very desirable. If it were restored and was painted/gelcoated it could fetch as much as $40,000 without power.

Other than missing features, the key factor is water intrusion. Inspecting the hull and drains for damage is key. Getting the boat weighed would really help but may not be possible.

Most Guardians at auction require lots of repairs to fiberglass and gelcoat, complete rewiring, new power and repairing/replacing hardware, hatches and installing newer engines.

Q2: Does a GUARDIAN 25 boat use any wood in the construction of the transom?

All Boston Whaler/CPD/GCPD models have marine plywood transoms.

Q3: Or elsewhere?

There is marine plywood reinforcement embedded in the fiberglass all over the deck, gunwales, hatches and fuel tank covers.

Q4: Should the hull be examined for retained moisture (in order to determine if embedded wood needs to be replaced)?

Inspect all the through hulls. Walk the floor in bare feet to feel soft spots. Inspect all hatches for split seams.

The GUARDIAN 25 has a massive below deck hold under the console, but it can only be accessed from a tiny port in front of the console.

Q5: What can that space be used for?

In the recreational model, there was a livewell that was forward and underneath the console.

Q6: Could the bottom of the center console be cut out to make a walk-in head?

No, not sufficient room. Would involve cutting into the inner foam liner, major fiberglass work required.

If you are ready to handle a BIG project, go for it. If not, keep looking.

In the CETACEA collection, at Page 35, there is a good description and many photographs of the restoration of a 22-foot RAIDER, another military version of a classic OUTRAGE hull, in this case a 22-footer. The project was quite an undertaking, and was done by a group associated with a fire department in Lakeside, Ohio. You may find this information to be useful in considering the refurbishment of another ex-military boat:

https://continuouswave.com/whaler/cetac ... age35.html

Be sure to note this comment:

Over 7,000 hours of volunteer work in a 24-month period were needed to rebuild the boat.