Hello folks! I recently acquired a Wenona Spirit II for an excellent price, which I’m going to try to repair. It’s royalex, from 2007, burgundy in color, has seen a lot of hard use, and been stored in the sun and snow. I’m new to canoe repair (and to fiberglass work), but am generally pretty handy.
Outcomes:
I’m trying to make this boat usable again. I don’t need it to be perfect, but would like it to look decent. I won’t be as hard on it as the teenage boys who used to take it down the Bloodvein, but I also don’t want to have to treat a royalex boat as a trophy piece. I would like to be able to portage with this boat, so weight is another consideration. It will be stored outside in Montana, or at best, in an unheated garage. I don’t mind spending a small amount on materials/tools if it means doing the job correctly. Durable, simple, lightweight, decent looking repairs are my goal.
The problems, my plan, and questions I’m hoping you fine folks have suggestions for:
1) The outer vinyl has worn away in the beam of the boat, along the chine, and the ABS has been left exposed to UV radiation for over 7 years. The ABS in this area has cracked, allowing moisture into the foam. Someone has tried to seal this area using what appears to be a resin, but it has cracked again anyway. From reading other threads here, I’ve concluded that I need to cut away the cracked ABS and sand the edges smooth. I plan to fill the resulting gouges with Gflex epoxy, thickened with silica, and sand it back to the original hull shape. So my question is, do you knowledgeable folks think I need to either a) put fiberglass in the gouges (as is done 7 minutes into this video: youtube.com/watch?v=cTAXGS7xWkU), or b) cover the whole damaged area with fiberglass? I would prefer not to, but obviously also want the boat to be structurally sound. Also, is there any reason to put graphite or pigment into the epoxy I use here?
2) The fiberglass skid plates are both A) worn down, and B) cracking at the edges (especially the bow skid plate). Again, someone appears to have slathered resin over top of this in an attempt to mitigate the damage, and that resin has subsequently cracked as well. Is it worth trying to salvage the existing skid plates (perhaps by injecting G-flex into the deeper/wider cracks and applying it over top of the plates as well? Or would it make more sense to just try to remove them and start over?
3) Other, smaller areas of the bottom of the hull are also worn through to the ABS, but do not seem to have otherwise suffered. Given the extent of this type of damage, I think that once the hull repairs are done (and the skid plates have been removed if applicable), I will paint the bottom of the boat, up to about 3” above the water line, with EZ-poxy, to protect the ABS from further degradation. Does anyone have a sense for how much weight 2 coats of EzPoxy would add to the boat?
4) Along the sides of the boat, above the water line, there are some chunks of vinyl missing (from being transported touching other boats there, or from ice/snow during outdoor storage?). Again, these have been "painted" over with a layer of resin on the starboard side, but not on the port. I plan to sand the resin back, smooth the vinyl-to-abs edges, apply Gflex, sand to smooth, and then spray paint with Krylon Fusion All-In-One. The color won’t match perfectly, but Wenonah tells me they haven’t carried color-matched paint for several years now.
Any thoughts, tricks or insights on this project, tips on materials, etc would be more than welcome! Thanks!!
Outcomes:
I’m trying to make this boat usable again. I don’t need it to be perfect, but would like it to look decent. I won’t be as hard on it as the teenage boys who used to take it down the Bloodvein, but I also don’t want to have to treat a royalex boat as a trophy piece. I would like to be able to portage with this boat, so weight is another consideration. It will be stored outside in Montana, or at best, in an unheated garage. I don’t mind spending a small amount on materials/tools if it means doing the job correctly. Durable, simple, lightweight, decent looking repairs are my goal.
The problems, my plan, and questions I’m hoping you fine folks have suggestions for:
1) The outer vinyl has worn away in the beam of the boat, along the chine, and the ABS has been left exposed to UV radiation for over 7 years. The ABS in this area has cracked, allowing moisture into the foam. Someone has tried to seal this area using what appears to be a resin, but it has cracked again anyway. From reading other threads here, I’ve concluded that I need to cut away the cracked ABS and sand the edges smooth. I plan to fill the resulting gouges with Gflex epoxy, thickened with silica, and sand it back to the original hull shape. So my question is, do you knowledgeable folks think I need to either a) put fiberglass in the gouges (as is done 7 minutes into this video: youtube.com/watch?v=cTAXGS7xWkU), or b) cover the whole damaged area with fiberglass? I would prefer not to, but obviously also want the boat to be structurally sound. Also, is there any reason to put graphite or pigment into the epoxy I use here?
2) The fiberglass skid plates are both A) worn down, and B) cracking at the edges (especially the bow skid plate). Again, someone appears to have slathered resin over top of this in an attempt to mitigate the damage, and that resin has subsequently cracked as well. Is it worth trying to salvage the existing skid plates (perhaps by injecting G-flex into the deeper/wider cracks and applying it over top of the plates as well? Or would it make more sense to just try to remove them and start over?
3) Other, smaller areas of the bottom of the hull are also worn through to the ABS, but do not seem to have otherwise suffered. Given the extent of this type of damage, I think that once the hull repairs are done (and the skid plates have been removed if applicable), I will paint the bottom of the boat, up to about 3” above the water line, with EZ-poxy, to protect the ABS from further degradation. Does anyone have a sense for how much weight 2 coats of EzPoxy would add to the boat?
4) Along the sides of the boat, above the water line, there are some chunks of vinyl missing (from being transported touching other boats there, or from ice/snow during outdoor storage?). Again, these have been "painted" over with a layer of resin on the starboard side, but not on the port. I plan to sand the resin back, smooth the vinyl-to-abs edges, apply Gflex, sand to smooth, and then spray paint with Krylon Fusion All-In-One. The color won’t match perfectly, but Wenonah tells me they haven’t carried color-matched paint for several years now.
Any thoughts, tricks or insights on this project, tips on materials, etc would be more than welcome! Thanks!!