Tinny Fleet
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2017
- Messages
- 168
- Reaction score
- 22
- Location
- Florida and New England
- LOCATION
- Melbourne Beach
One of the vessels in my tinny fleet is a 14 Smokercraft, which I bought quite a few years ago, and have been using as a rowboat in small ponds and rivers. Its a good size for my young son and I for a morning out, and it is very responsive to the oars - light as a feather in the water.
The PO had beat up the boat a bit. Among other issues the transom was buckled and bowed, perhaps from running too heavy a motor, or allowing the motor to flop around while trailering. Who knows. The transom was also rotted out. Indeed the wood part of the transom located on the water side of the skin had fungus growing out of it and was so rotten that it came apart in my hands.
I decided to replace the transom as this would mean I could run an outboard on the back. During my misspent yout' I would have cheerfully slapped a 25 hp on it and screamed away bouncing from wavetop to wavetop in wild haste to get to where the lunkers were. These days it would be half that horsepower or less, lessons learned.
First task was to make the new plywood, which I did out of marine plywood.
The transom on the inside of the skin was 5 1/2 x 48 and just an easy rectangle to cut. The old piece of wood on the water side of the skin was small, and so I used the template of similar piece from a 16' StarCraft. Bigger is more better, right?
They got two robust coats of the "Old Timer's formula"
The PO had beat up the boat a bit. Among other issues the transom was buckled and bowed, perhaps from running too heavy a motor, or allowing the motor to flop around while trailering. Who knows. The transom was also rotted out. Indeed the wood part of the transom located on the water side of the skin had fungus growing out of it and was so rotten that it came apart in my hands.
I decided to replace the transom as this would mean I could run an outboard on the back. During my misspent yout' I would have cheerfully slapped a 25 hp on it and screamed away bouncing from wavetop to wavetop in wild haste to get to where the lunkers were. These days it would be half that horsepower or less, lessons learned.
First task was to make the new plywood, which I did out of marine plywood.
The transom on the inside of the skin was 5 1/2 x 48 and just an easy rectangle to cut. The old piece of wood on the water side of the skin was small, and so I used the template of similar piece from a 16' StarCraft. Bigger is more better, right?
They got two robust coats of the "Old Timer's formula"