On my Seafari my cuts in the stepdown were where the floor became tangent to the fillet radius in the corner at the vertical wall. I used some caulking or easy to sand filling material to fill and fair the crack. Fortunately the cuts are probably less noticable than on a cut in a flat area. Good luck.

Did some more investigating this past weekend and I think moose is right, I need to recore that entire front area. I drilled some test holes underneath directly ahead of the port/stbd hatches and althought its not rotten, its definitely wet. I'm buttoning it back up as-is for now until I have a game plan in place to do the whole thing. I'll likely buy 3 new fiberglass hatches and try to coverup my cuts with kiwi grip.

I didn't want to be but in my late night Margarita induced rant things just get said. ;) Don't loose too much sleep about ascetics at this point. If you plan on keeping this hull for the long run you will eventually have to get into the entire deck, transom and stringers. Right now run and fish that thing like you stole it. The best times you will have on that boat are ones that are not spent working on it. If it is safe and reliable get to it and have a ball. Trust me, trailer queens aren't nearly as fun as a beat up, blood stained battle wagon unless your fun happens at the sandbar.

That's what I'm thinking about right now. The good news is the top deck is separated from the lower deck with a section that's 100% fiberglass. The rest of teh deck has 0 screws in it except for teh leaning post (console is glassed) so hopefully that still has life in it. We shall see! Time to start reading about kiwi grip and making fiberglass hatches.

http://www.classicseacraft.com/commu...ht=hatch+molds
Read this.

Excellent, thank you.