CONTINUOUSWAVE

I have a 1988 Revenge 22 W-T Whaler Drive boat. I’m replacing my engines so I am re-rigging the entire boat.

Q1: is there any reason to remove the Whaler Drive while I have the engines off the boat?

Q2; is there ever a need to replace the sealant between the transom and the whaler Drive?

Thanks.

I infer that if you remove the Whaler Drive you want to put it back on. For a moment I thought otherwise.

I can't offer any first-hand account of what might be encountered in trying to remove a Whaler Drive from the transom of a REVENGE 22 W-T Whaler Drive. At first glance, it looks to me to be a rather serious component to try to separate from the hull. I have no idea what sort of sealant or adhesive was used during the installation of the Whaler Drive. Maybe 20-years ago you could have called Boston Whaler and spoken to a guy who actually worked on assembling the Whaler Drive and could tell you exactly what they did, but I doubt you can still do that.

From all I have seen and experienced, the Whaler Drive is REALLY attached to the hull, and there is no way I would try to remove it just to put in back in place later, unless there was some evidence a serious problem had developed and needed to be repaired

Your questions caused me to go look at the Whaler Drive on my 1990 REVENGE 22 W-T Whaler Drive--a 30-second trip out the door and into the backyard. From what I can see there is just a caulk line between the Whaler Drive and the transom. It does not look like there was a huge amount of adhesive smeared onto the joint area. I also noticed that on my boat, on the side that is perpetually facing south the caulk line is more dried up than on the north side of the hull. (The boat spends most of its time in June through September outdoors parked in the driveway, facing West, on the trailer. The south side or Port side gets a lot more direct sunlight than the north side or Starboard side. The rest of the time it stored covered and indoors.)

On the basis of that ten-minute-old observation, about all I would recommend is you inspect the caulk line, and if the caulk has dried or cracked, try removing the old caulk, then redoing that all-round caulk line with new caulk. But that will not require the Whaler Drive to be separated from the hull transom.

As far as I can see, the Whaler Drive is attached with screw fasteners and four (or five) huge thought-bolted support tubes. (If you are rigging with twin engines there should be a center support tube that is on transom center-line.) If the Whaler Drive were also adhered to the hull with a strong marine adhesive like 3M5200 you would probably never be able to separate it from the transom without some damage to either side's gel coat.