Took the day off from work yesterday to celebrate my birthday by going fishing. Inevitably when I do this mother nature decides otherwise. So plan B was to change out the rollers that have been giving me issues & causing some damage to the hull.
Well I load up the truck with tools & generator
then& head off to the trailer supply to get supplies. Then off to the a quiet ramp to launch the boat & do the work. Well since the rollers haven't been rolling I've had to put the trail further into the water & float off thus causing the bow to float off to one side or the other. When I motored off for the last time I felt a suspicious thud & chalked it up to another scratch in the gelcoat. I started my work on the rollers, which went surpisingly smooth. I was able to break all the old bolts by hand & didn't need the sawz-all until later when I had to cut out the roller rods. Got everything installed & ran a line to get all rollers level, then tightened down the bolts.
Before
After
Looks 100% better!
So I back the trailer down & now I will no longer need to put it in the water as far. I take advantage of the quiet ramp praticing loading & unloading. Since I mostly fish solo or have the wife & my 3y/o daughter, it's a one man show. Man what a difference the new rollers made! I will really have to be carefull not to drop her on the asphalt & keep her hooked up until ready to offload.
So I pull her out to inspect the roll heights & discover this!
This boat has so much senti
mental value to me but I'm beginning to beleive it's going to be the death of me!
Oly has done some gelcoat work for me in the past & will be doing this repair as well but man o man this was not the way I wanted to spend my b-day! Oly suggested later getting rid of the gelcoat & going with paint. Will the paint be more durrable? Once the repairs are done should I go with a keel gaurd type product. I think some of these damages are a direct result of the boat sitting for soooo long on the trailer.
Thanks for the rant!
