Wow, I can't believe it's been six years since I've posted on here. Not even a month after I had her on the water the guys from the High and Dry called me to tell me there was a crack in the bottom port side of the hull. Needless to say their story about discovering the crack didn't add up but I couldn't prove otherwise. We suspect they point loaded or dropped the boat causing the stringers to delaminate and the crack to occur.
I decided to continue using the boat by trying to patch from the outside and cruise slowly without banging her through chop and wake. Well, life went on and six years passed and now she is getting repaired. I wanted to start this thread up again to share the repair progress with you and let everybody know the guys at Sea Force IX are doing a great job. They are super accommodating and really know their stuff. I'll be glad to answer any questions about the process.
So here is what we're doing
1. Grinding down the crap I put on the outside of the hull over the crack and repairing with a putty mixture.
2. Pulling up the floor and cutting away the stringer to repair the crack
3. Rebuilding the stringer and glassing it back to the hull
4. The port stringer delaminated so we are glassing that back to the hull
5. Glassing the transom knees to the stringers
6. Creating recessed hatch covers in front of transom and console
7. Adding support brackets under the gunnels to reduce the flex when people are stepping and standing on them.
8. Replacing the fold down front of the console with two hatch covers with cushions
9. Painting and repairing spider cracks in live well as well as adding a recessed drain
10. Adding stern eyes to transom
11. Installing new electric trim tabs
12. Replace coarse non-skid coating on gunnels and transom cap with finer Awlgrip nonskid.
Here are some pics of the progress being made.
You can see the livewell that will be painted. Needed to add a recessed drain as the one I had in there was about 1/4" higher than the bottom the live well which meant I had to sponge out water to get it completely empty.