Restoring 1985 SPORT 15: Repairing and Painting

[HarleyG8r]

Related to my plan for restoring my recently acquired 1985 SPORT 15, I have these questions

Q1: after patching various holes and painting with AWLGRIP 545 primer (or similar), and then sanding, will the primer coat be sufficient to fill and "repair" all the crazing?

Q2: If the primer paint is not sufficient, how can the crazing and cracking be properly repaired?

Q3: are both Alexseal or Awlcraft, compatible with the 545 primer?

Q4: between Alexseal or Awlcraft, which is better?

Q5: where can the after market console seen in the website page linked below be purchased?

https://fasseco.com/featured-boston-whaler/1983-boston-whaler-15-customsideconsole-tannler

BACKSTORY (LONG)
My neighbor had a 1985 Sport 15 that probably hasn't moved from the side of his house in 10 years, if not more, so I made him a deal and now it's in my driveway.

I spent my entire adult life lamenting that I never had a Boston Whaler boat while growing up in south Florida. Now with a 21-month-old and another one on the way, decided I needed to live vicariously through them.

The good news: [I am] thinking the foam is pretty dry because the boat hasn't seen the water in forever. [The hull does not] seem to have any water in it--based on my judgement of [the boat and trailer's total] weight when I was pushing around the trailer with boat on it.

Also, I don't see any water weeping out of the drain tube. Everything below the waterline seems solid, [and there are] no dings or scrapes.

The bad news: due to exposure to sun there is gel coat fading, there is gel cost grazing and cracking, the hull has bottom paint, and a lot things have been attached to the hull by screws over the years.

The restoration will be done slowly, and I am aiming for very high quality (as in the boat linked above in Q5).

I've done some glass and gelcoat work over the years, so I am not a novice. I will strip the boat of everything to get to a bare hull. I will remove the bottom paint. I will do all the fiberglass repair and preparation work, then I will hire a painter to stray the hull and cockpit. Then I will slowly put the boat back together. Finally, I will re-power with a new Yamaha F70 engine.

FIgures 1 to 6 show images (hosted elsewhere) of the boat in its present condition.


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[Moderator's note: deleted a question asking for the opinions of the quality of a well-known vendor's products. That topic has been discussed extensively in many prior discussions. Use a search using the vendor's name to locate many prior discussions.]

[HarleyG8r]

Q6: what is the best method to repair a soft spot in the deck of my 1985 SPORT 15 that is about the diameter of a basketball?

[Moderator's note: the diameter of a basket ball in the NBA is specified to be between 9.43 and 9.51 inches.]

There is soft spot in the cockpit deck right where your feet go when sitting at the helm. There is a pencil-eraser size gouge in the deck where I assume water has gotten in over the years. It appears that there is a plywood layer directly below the deck under all of the non-skid in this generation of 1985 SPORT 15.

[Moderator's note: a pencil eraser on a classic No. 2 wooden pencil is about 5-mm.]

I think the easiest [repair method for soft deck areas] would be to suck out what water I can with a shop vacuum, and let [the wet area inside the hull] dry in the sun a few days. Then I will drill a grid of small holes across the entire extent of the soft area, and inject each hole with Git Rot or a similar thin penetrating epoxy.

I have read [somewhere on line] that the heat from the curing of the Git Rot can deteriorate the foam in the hull.

[Survey question deleted; please do not ask survey questions to find out if readers posses certain experience or knowledge.]

[jimh]

Initial threads that ask many questions on many topics are generally very bad ways to elicit information. If you asks multiple questions the replies become all mixed together. It is much better to ask a single question or a series of two or three that are all closely related, rather than ask multiple unrelated questions.

On that basis, I will only reply to your first and second questions:

Q1: after patching various holes and painting with AWLGRIP 545 primer (or similar), and then sanding, will the primer coat be sufficient to fill and "repair" all the crazing?

I recommend you call AWLGRIP and get their opinion about their product. They seem like a company that can answer questions from prospective users of their product.

There are at least ten prior discussion about repairs that mention AWLGRIP 545, so you might want to read those prior discussions. You can find them all with this search query;

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acontinuouswave.com+AWLGRIP+545

Q2: If the primer paint is not sufficient, how can the crazing and cracking be properly repaired?

An excellent method for repairing older Boston Whaler boats where the hull and cockpit have a lot of cracks and crazing is demonstrated in a presentation from TotalBoat on youTube at:

Boston Whaler Crazing Repair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tZDBOYqdfA