16 Starcraft Seafarer -

[sams]

I grew up fishing and lobstering with my father on a 14' starcraft with 18 'rude tiller. When I was about 14 he bought this 16' startcraft with a 40hp Tohatsu and it has been in our family ever since. After college I bought a 19' fiberglass center console and then a 25' Pursuit with a cuddy. Now with 2 little girls and wife staying at home it is time to bring the old starfcraft back to life.

The boat has been used only seldomly in the past 10 years and not at all for 3 or 4. Luckily there is a reason why the 3rd world loves Tohatsu engines: It's because they won't die. After sitting in the bushes for 3-4 years, un winterized or preserved in any way it started right up with only a quick squirt of ether and some fresh gas. I ran it in a bucket at idle for about an hour and never hung up or stalled.
The hull has been leaky for as long as I can remember so before she sees the water again I will rebuck the rivets and possibly add a coat of Gluvit to the hull. I hope to get the family on the water this summer so major mods will have to wait until next year.

Here are a few pictures as she sits in the yard with my two little helpers cleaning out old leaves. After we got the debris out I filled her with water and started marking drips. One thing that I notices was that a lot of water was pouring out of the drain holes in the keel. Some of the keel rivets were showing drips, while others did not. Will the leaking rivets all show some water above the keel seam or do some drain into the keel 100%?

sam

 

[Ictalurus]

Nice boat sams, that should fly with the 40 HP on there!

 

[sams]

I really need to get a power trim/tilt unit for the engine to get the HP out of her. To keep it on the rails in a chop I need to have the engine trimmed pretty far down. This means that when it is flat it stuffs the bow and bow steers. Making a wedge that will give me basically 1/2 of one more pin of trim might also work.

sam

 

[sams]

I filled the bottom of the boat with water to mark all the leaky rivets for rebucking. In doing this I noticed that many of the leaky rivets are along the keel. It is my expectation that this is from longitudinal hull flex work in the rivets. I am considering adding a floor in the next year or so and figure that the additional of one or two stringers would add stiffness prevent reoccurrence.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

sam

 

[sams]

The supplies have arrived for me to go ahead and get the hull sealed up. Here are some rivets sets from aircraft spruce (thanks for the heads up on that one guys) that I will use to get the rivets tightened back up.

If she is as tight and dry as I want her after the rivet work I will toss her in the water to use for the rest of the season. If she still needs more sealing after the rebucking I will gluvit the hull now. If not I will wait until this winter when I plan to remove some or all of the seats and put in a main deck at walking level as well as fore and aft casting decks.
1 of 2 gallon units of Gluvit. I thank that shoudl eb plenty for a 16' hull.

sam

 

[sams]

Well after fishing trips and only very little work done since I started this thread it is time to actually put some work into the boat. The one thing I did try was to buck my leaky rivets which was not very successful. As a result I have decide to replace the leaky rivets with closed end blind rivets. I order my first batch from McMaster Carr and put in about a dozen last night. I also used a little dab of 5200 on the heads to ensure a good seal.

The ones I put in last night had a slightly higher grip range than I really needed so there was a bit of extra rivet sticking up. The rivets appear to be well sealed despite the extra material. Additionally what little info I could find on line appears to confirm that rivets with extra grip are not a problem, while rivets with too little grip are a problem.

I will keep the current rivets to use in ribbed areas and have some shorter ones on the way for the ones that land between ribs (aka places I will step on them until there is a floor). At this point in time it is probably just an issue of how many rivets I end up replacing. Who knows, this may be a new boat in a few weeks.


One StarCraft specific question at this time has to do with oil canning in the bow area. I am sure that others have experienced this and wonder what steps, if any, were taken to lessen it. I have though of adding some ribs, but worry that I will put in stress points that will cause hull fatigue and cracking. My other Idea was to form a small area in the impact region and fill it with expandable foam. (I know the risk of water intrusion and don't really care based on the small amount of area). Has anyone reinforced a bow their bow in a Seafarer or comparable semi V? Any suggestions are welcome.

I'll post some pics this weekend.

sam