Hi all. It's been a few years since I've posted on here. Back then I was building my first boats. This year I've started building two kidarka's for my three year old son and six year old niece. While doing so I decided to make some changes to my sea tour and sea bee.

A little background. My older boats were built with a bunch of scrap plywood I had around. By the time I got to the coamings I was out of the good finnish birch and resorted to the cheap big box store stuff I had. Three years of being stored up under my deck, and both of the coamings were disintegrating. Lesson learned there. On the kidarka's I've used nothing but baltic birch, and completely sealed all the ply with epoxy this time...

Due to the coaming issues I decided to re-skin, and while I'm at it enlarge the cockpit to something like Dave Gentry's chuckanuts. I can barely get in and out of my see bea with out being double jointed in my knees, and I figure if I open up the cockpit my son can fit in our boats. It's not like I'll be going out in the open ocean with him any time soon.

Observations:
Today I stripped off the skins, and discovered the other problem of being stored up under my deck. At the bow and stern I had drilled through for carry ropes, and water was seeping in through the holes and settling. The ply all seems good, but the cedar is definitely worse for wear. What I found really interesting was that my first boat I built I used Tom Yosts glue and pin with a wooden dowel technique. The saturated (starting to rot) cedar has actually released from the epoxy and urethane glues holding it to the wooden pegs and stems. On my sea bee I had questioned why am I pulling out the screws and replacing them with wooden pegs? I'll just use stainless screw I stead. The result was that my sea bee stringers are still firmly attached even with the water damage.

I was also astounded at how much sand was trapped in there. I'm always careful, but wow. I'm reskinning in a lighter weight 8oz poly, so I'm definitely lining all of the stringers with foam weatherstripping this time to prevent pin holes.

Questions:
With my water damage: clearly storing outside under my deck contributed to this, and in August when we move to the Maryland shore they'll be stored inside. Unfortunately the damage has been done. I don't think I have to completely replace the stringers. They are cedar and fir, and still seem mostly solid at the tips. After reattaching I'm considering epoxying all of the damaged parts. Will that be enough? Should I encapsulate those parts in glass also?

Thanks, I know it was a bit long winded.

John