Interior Refurbishing

Splash Well Shelf

After completing the transom, the last task for restoring the aft portion of the Offshore was to rebuild the splash well. Most reading this probably know about this feature of outboard boats, but I wasn't real familiar with it. If I understand it correctly, when you slow down, especially coming off a plane, the wake (wave) catches up to the boat and you can get water over the transom. If you don't have a splash well this water would go into the bilge, which you could either pump out or open the drains when the boat is under way to let gravity and vacuum expel it. The well is self draining. 

Remnants of the port (top) and starboard splashwell shelf when I got the boat.

The shelf rests on cleats installed on the bulkhead and transom. One could also put cleats along the side, but the factory didn't do this; instead they tabbed the shelf onto the bottom of the vertical stiffeners you see in the above pictures. I did the same, because the shelf will be plenty sturdy without cleats there.

After measuring several times I marked the position for the transom cleats. The bulkhead cleat was installed while I was working on the it...there's a picture of that on the Transom III page.

Center (above) and starboard transom shelf cleats. I put kerfs (too many) in the side cleats because of the curvature of the transom. The ubiquitous GelMagic was used to bond these, with a single screw to hold them during curing.

After installation I filled the kerfs with GelMagic, coated all the clear fir cleats with resin, then bonded in a center support since the shelves needed to be installed in two pieces, much like the transom plys. Then I cut templates for the shelves using thick corrugated cardboard. I used some nice planer ½" A-C plywood for the shelves. Before installing them I glued flotation onto the stringers, using polyurethane calk (I prefer Loctite). I used the same product to glue the foam layers together.

Foam flotation in the starboard bilge. Note center support for the shelves.

These boats originally came with blocks of flotation, but they are long gone from this one...probably removed when a previous owner cut out the bottom of the bulkhead. I used 1½"  building insulation; one 4X8 sheet almost filled both sides. You will see in the above picture that I could have installed another sheet, and would have if I didn't begin to wonder how much buoyancy these would add. A quick calculation yielded a dismaying figure: 115 lbs. With a 250 lb outboard I think this means that the boat would sink a tiny bit slower if the worst were to happen. The hull, fuel, people, and gear weigh at least another 1500 lbs. So a couple more layers of foam wouldn't significantly affect the survival of captain and crew. Maybe I can get a break on insurance by checking the "flotation" box!

Installing the shelves involved sealing the underside with resin, then bonding them to the cleats using GelMagic and a few screws (all these are powder coated and fully encapsulated in epoxy, so there is no chance they will rust). 

Shelves installed. I made a mistake while cutting them, so inserted a filler piece in the middle.

At this point I needed to heat the new enclosed bilge area, so made a little box out of scrap foam to install over the bilge access. The heater ran for about three days to fully cure everything in that area. Heater box for bilge. The last steps were to fillet the edges of the shelf and lay finishing cloth over the whole shebang.

Heater suspended in the splash well, after laying and wetting out the finishing cloth. The usual rigid foam that makes up the hot box was installed after this photo was taken. After quite a bit of sanding to level out runs in the epoxy (and I didn't get them all) I applied several coats of primer to the splash well with System Three Yacht Primer. This is a 2-part epoxy waterborne paint, which makes cleanup easy but is very thin and so cover and build is poor. It is also expensive, and I used almost a quart ($50) just for the shelf area. After this I applied polyurethane paint, specifically Pettit Hatteras White. I found a color similar to this behind the helm box after removing it, with the original spatter coat of red and black. This will be carried through the interior when I get around to repainting the interior (maybe next year?) I will color match this and probably lay down a good latex inside the boat. Much less expensive, and the interior won't get the salt corrosive water that the splash well will. Transom shelf area in Hatteras White. Need to get the spatter paint on before mounting the motor. Current interior paint and original (above window frame) revealed when the newer paint peeled away during window removal. Little dots of red and black were factory. Big dots with lines were in vogue in the 60's; a webbing solution was mixed in to make the lines. It looks quite gauche to me. I found myself wondering why older boats have spatter paint over the base coat. I haven't looked into it, but have two theories: 1) added interest and maybe a custom look, and 2) hiding imperfections. I like door #2. With no interior hull liner (I think this was instituted in the 1959 20' redesign by Philip F. Spaulding) the coarse weave fabric shows through, and the spatter tends to camouflage it. I like it in my transom because of the numerous imperfections due to resin runs and poorly laid cloth!  6/18/2018 Last week I gave the transom and splash well a final coat of Hattaras White and spatter painted the latter. The technique for this is pretty simple but takes some practice. I used an HVLP (high volume/low pressure) detail gun with the fluid adjustment screw open as far as possible and just a pound or two of air pressure. I got mostly drops but some spray as well, which is similar to the factory original. Also, I don't think I have quite the density of splatter as the original, but felt like I was getting carried away because it was so fun to do! I can always add to it later. Here are pictures of the old and new spatter jobs: Detail of original spatter, found when I removed the helm box. Width is about 3 inches. My job, same scale as above.  The colors are quite close to the original shown above, red and charcoal. The red is the same Fire Red I'll use on the topsides, and I came pretty close to the charcoal color by mixing 1.5 cc of white with 5 cc of black. Transom masked and spatter painted. Starboard splash well. Detail of spatter coat. I darkened this photo to bring out the color. Battery Installation The shelf is home to the battery. I actually have a good Group 24 battery with a box that was almost new when we bought our travel trailer 2½ years ago. I promptly installed solar panels on the roof and two Group 27 AGM batteries inside the trailer, so now I can put this spare battery to good use. It seems to me that the battery box needs to be held down so it doesn't move around while bounding over waves. I think most people use cleats to keep the battery in place or brackets fastened with wood screws to hold it down. I chose a more robust system using T-nuts, installed in the starboard shelf before it was bonded to the cleats. These are T-nuts. They are cool Installed in starboard shelf. Note GelMagic smeared around them for waterproofing Here's a "don't do this at home" tip: when you coat something that has holes you want to preserve, plug them so resin or paint doesn't fill them in. I know that seems obvious, but apparently it wasn't to me. I drilled out the resin as best I could then chased the threads with a tap.