I am now over my intended budget and about one third of the way done. Since I do not intend to take any shortcuts it seems I need to re-budget. This usually means that it is time to sell something. This weekend I will be spending part of my project time setting up Ebay auctions. I have a lot of older projects that can be liquidated so that this show can go on.

So far my timetable has not been jeopardized by my penchant for doing too much. I hope that this will still be the case next month when the bass start hitting in the big lakes. I want to christen the boat with my father and brothers at Lake Walknwater about two hours north of here. I know it is a flats boat but I always preferred freshwater and my father has never gotten a really big bass…

Update:
Well more bad news…Took off the stainless motor spacer in preparation for the jack plate mounting and found that there was one more piece of wood that I had yet to replace. Yes, the transom is cored with wood and full of rot! When I pulled the spacer off the bolt threads were filled with wet wood particles. On to the net I go to research transom repairs.

Another hint about the internet and searches…I downloaded a search bot called Copernic Agent from a web site named www.Tucows.com. It does a fantastic job of searching for what you need. It searches a bunch of the normal search engines at once and displays the results for you in a descending order of match to your criteria. If you don’t have it…get it!

While researching transom repairs I found that there are basically two methods (with variations within the methods of course) to replacing the rotted wood. The first was simply cutting off either the inner or outer fiberglass skin, putting in new wood, and re glassing over it. The second was cut off the transom cap, remove the wood with drills, saws ect, and pouring in a composite to replace the wood, and replacing the cap.

Since I was removing wood as much as possible I opted to try out the pour method. I found several references to a repair media called Seacrete and decided to read up on it.
I downloaded the manual and read all of the forums for similar problems. It seems that a lot of people have this problem so at least I know that I have plenty of company in my misery.

Update:
Per the instructions I cut off the cap between the inner and outer fiberglass walls and started drilling holes in the exposed wood. Unfortunately the transom wood was made up of three separate pieces of wood laminated together with fiberglass. The wood would come out with a bit of work but the glass just didn’t want to come out. So I went on to the second removal method of removing the inner fiberglass wall. This gave me better access to the fiberglass parts and made the removal much easier. Hopefully this will only take a few days…

Update:
Jack plate and chart plotter came in! I bought a Goldeneye dual lift instead of the normal slide style lift. The scissor style action should allow better control of the motor. The chart plotter I opted for is the Matrix 67 by Humminbird. Bang for buck I just couldn’t find any better.

Still working on the transom….