Putting my 1991 31 foot Ocean Master on a SERIOUS diet!
 

Well, here we go. Just got my new 28 footer in the water, if you didn't see that build, you can check that out here:

Next project is my 31 Ocean Master. This is the boat I started on down here, and this is the first boat I really started modifying, but since it was my only boat for my first 5 years here, I really couldn't take it apart and set it up like I want it because it paid the bills. But now with the new "Quepos 28" in the water, and the gamefisherman and my other 28 foot Apex fishing everyday, I finally get freed up and get to fix this boat like it needs to be done. Now before I start posting pictures of what we are going to this thing, I have to make a quick disclaimer for Ocean Master. This boat was built in 1991 and has been a great boat. Back when they built this thing, the trend was towards heavy boats, and they accomplished that. And although this boat was 100 percent water logged, it is 24 years old. When I first bought this boat, I called Ocean Master as I had to convert it to diesel to see any kind of billfish action, and they were SO SO helpful, even though I bought one of their relics and they didn't make any money off of me. Here's a picture of what we are starting with:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/1sr1A.jpg

I love the lines on this boat. Its almost carolina style, although it's not cold molded, I really like the shear break.

Here's a picture of where I put the motor 7 years ago when I converted it to diesel:


http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/1sr1b.jpg

And then some interior shots:


http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/1sr1c.jpg

And here is why I hate plastic hatches. This one is just a year old:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/1sr1d.jpg

So that was the good. The bad was this thing just keeps getting heavier. This last season it got spanked every trip out (199 to 1) by my gamefisherman. It was such a masacre, that this year I don't even want to fish it until we can lighten it up. The floor was 1 inch thick plywood, with several layers of fiberglass mat (I hate mat) over it. Super super super heavy, especially since this boat is made out of polyester resin, and 24 years means EVERY inch of plywood in this boat is rotten. Even stuff that was sealed, because of Osmosis and the fine pores in Polyester resin, all the wood is 100 percent rotten. Check out the floor:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1b.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1c.jpg

And then the parts that don't have wood are like an inch thick ?? Check out the thickness of the CENTER CONSOLE wall. I get it, they did thick heavy boats back then, but this center console easily weighed in around 800 pounds.

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1a.jpg

And then here are some de-construction pictures:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1d.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1e.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/sr1sept1f.jpg

And when we finally got the tower off and the console out, here's another side view:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/s...ertoweroff.jpg

And then here are some more destruction pictures! We are kind of doing a time lapse, this boat has been out about 2 months now, but I've been working on my 28 footer so I just go and beat on this one when the other one frustrates me. So here are the pictures of taking the floor out. The back part of the floor was a thick layer of glass:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloorb.jpg

and then a layer of mud that used to be wood, and then another layer of thick glass on top. The whole cockpit came out like this, we took the top layer off, and then washed the middle layer away with a water hose, and then removed the bottom layer of glass.

The front pieces were a bit more solid, like it was rotten wood not mud, but they were super heavy. A square yard piece took two people to lift up, and it was super heavy for both people.

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloora.jpg

We decided to take out the front floor in one piece, so first we cut the edges:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloord.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloore.jpg

and then we put 6 big guys to lift it out. But it was soo heavy that we would have had more luck trying to pick up my pickup truck. So we got out the big motor hoist and finally got it out.

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloorc.jpg

And the floor was that heavy NOT including all the structure that was under the floor. Here is what we were left with after we used the big wench to get the floor out:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/takingoutfloorf.jpg

Got the floor out. The black is a mix of a little bit of oil, and a lot of rotten putrified plywood.

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1A.jpg

Check out this piece of the floor up front. Completely sludge. This was all glass, the plywood had long since turned to mud, but you could see the glass took the shape of the knots in the ply, kind of like a fossil :)

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1f.jpg

And then some more dissassembled photos:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1b.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1c.jpg

And some of the rotten crud we took out:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1e.jpg

And then here's a story. So I bought this boat about 7-8 years back, and it had outboards. It didn't raise billfish on the troll at all, so I changed it over to a cummins. I had NO idea what I was doing, still don't :), but one of the old timers told me I need 160 gallons minimum. Why a day charter fishing boat that burns 40-45 gallons of fuel would need 160 gallons is beyond me, but since I usually listen when the smart people speak, i combined the 2 side tanks with some aluminum and built what has to be the heaviest fuel tank on earth. After we built this out of aluminum using pieces of the factory tanks, we covered it in 5 layers of mat to stop the corrosion. Obviously, this is going in the garbage pile, and my new 60 gallon plastic tank is going to save a whopping 495 pound while DRY and another 700 pounds or so when full. That's over 1000 pounds just in fuel tank...

World's ugliest and heaviest fuel tank?
http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/916SR1d.jpg

Also, the small plastic tank will give me the ability to ALWAYS top off my fuel tank every day. That means I won't get condensation in the tank at night when the air cools off, and my diesel will be much cleaner. All around win.



And then it was time to take out the weight that was left. I once talked with a very knowledgable boat builder that said the bottom of the boat is where you hit stuff and it needs to be thick. The sides just keep the water out. So with that in mind we decided to make the sides of the boat thinner.

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/923SR1A.jpg

Something to know about boats that were built back in the 90's, they used two molds to make them. They did the hull in a big mold, and then with this boat, they did another mold for the inside. So the walls of the boat are double layered, and are every bit as thick as the bottom. So we seperated the walls and took the inside wall out. There was actually enough glass that we took off of the side walls that we donated it to a local builder in the yard and he built a water taxi out of it, and it's big enough to hold a small car.

So after they made the outside mold and the inside mold, they used what I think is cement to stick the two together:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/SR11018d.jpg


It looks like they used tile grout spreader to make the cement the same thickness, but they failed to get the inside skin to touch the outside skin, so you can still see the lines from the spreader. Knowing the two layers were seperated and not functioning together relieved any doubts that the inside skin is just extra weight.

The worst job in the entire world was grinding all that cement off of those walls. That was a full 60 hours of work with a 9 inch grinder and 16 grit sandpaper, but what a difference:

Before:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/SR11018e.jpg

After:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/SR11018f.jpg

And then of course the transom. 3 inches of rotten sludge. We got all the plywood out of it as well:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/SR11018c.jpg

And here's an inside shot of all the cement dust on the floor after one of those days of grinding on the walls. We made a cloud that covered cars and kids for about a mile down wind:


http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/SR11018b.jpg

Man you putting in some work!

Looking forward to the build.

that looks scary as hell

Kind of. I did about 1000 trips as charter captain of this boat and all day up there in the tower, I would drive around looking for fish and think of what I would like to do with the boat if I had the time and money. I don't have the money yet, but we are fishing pretty good, and I'll make the time. It's something I've been wanting to do for years, so I'm pretty excited to see what we can do with this one!

Heck of a project Capt! Enjoyed your other re-build very much. I have a question concerning all that weight you're taking out the boat. Being you have a tower your center of gravity will change drastically with more weight sifting up from the hull of the boat. Is there any issue regarding stability/handling rough seas in a lighter boat? Will ballast be needed in your bilge area?

One more question...Are your stringers wood fiber glassed over or composite filled?

The tower is weightless as it's all aluminum. I can pick it up by myself, so it really doesn't factor in to the center of gravity. And then when I take the floor weight out of the boat, and the border weight out of the boat, I am actually lowering the center of gravity because the heaviest three things are the hull, the motor which is very low, and the fuel tank which sit on the hull. So it increases the stability, and without the extra weight doesn't crash down so hard on the other side of the wave and give you more of an "on top" of the water feel instead of trying to plow through everything. I did several over a 1000 trips on this heavy boat, and then around 200 on my weightless gamefisherman, and the gamefisherman is soo much better when things get rough. And weight is a big factor.

The stringers are hollow from the factory. The motor stringers are made out of a hard rot resistent wood covered in epoxy, but the big long hull supports are hollow and I make sure they have plenty of drainage points so they don't fill up with water. One of the things I didn't get a photo of and should have is the front of this boat was holding around 200 gallons of water because it wasn't designed to drain correctly. They had these narrow PVC pipes glassed in everywhere, but when the "floor mud" got into the hull, it stopped up those pipes and made swimming pools up front of black rancid water. When we cut open the front part of the floor, it smelled like somebody let out a HUGE :)

Thanks for the response Capt. I can see your boat handling better running on top of seas instead of wallowing like a displacement hull at above planing speeds with that lighter weight. Good luck on your project!

Well, today has to be some kind of record for accomplishments on a build. Me and harold started early, like 5am early, and we raised up the stringers. I added 6 inches on the outside stringers and 7 inches on the inside stringers. I want the water to the sides and then run to the back. The original floor was very flat, and the water just kind of hung out, so we are adding a ton of angle to get rid of the deck water. Here's the stingers, we got them done by around 4pm:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1a.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1b.jpg

As you can see, I went ahead and started doing the bird cages as soon as the resin got sticky, and we got some of the bulkheads in. That is 1 inch corecell, I got a box of 20 :)

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1c.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1d.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1f.jpg

While I was working on that, Harold was putting new intake and exhaust tubes on my Versatone two stage muffler. We had to modify this with elbows for the other boat, but now we are going to put this under the floor in between the stringers pretty much right here, but a little bit back:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1e.jpg

Well, I kept going on making birdcages and cutting out foam and I got these bulkheads cut:

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1g.jpg

And then around 6pm, I was still working on this by myself, and two friends of mine that are restoring an old bertram showed up. I was over there the other day showing them the corecell and how it worked, and so they returned the favor tonight, and we stayed out there until 9pm and got the cabin wall birdcaged and cut and in place!!!

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1h.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1i.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1j.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1k.jpg

http://www.QueposFishAdventure.com/Dec1SR1l.jpg

I did something really sneaky which I think is going to save me a TON of time. I took all 20 sheets of corecell, and rented a warehouse about a month ago and had somebody just put a layer of glass on all 20 sheets. So now all we have to do is cut it, put it in place, and do 6 inches around the edge and be done! He did some of the sheets on both sides, like these that need to be straight, and on some of the other sheets, he only glassed one side, so when I put them in the boat they will still bend. And so we have all the bulkheads foam pieces glassed on both side, and all the floor and cabin pieces are already glassed on one side. We are going to fly through the build :)

Tomorrow, we are going to sand 6 inches around all the joints, give them a nice 1 inch filet, and hopefully have all this glassed in tomorrow. We left the front wall high in the center because I want to put a 6 inch crown on the cabin roof. We didn't cut the border yet up front because I want to glass the bottom part in so we dont' loose the form of the boat. After this big wall is glassed in, I'm going to take the front border forward of the division out, so we can build the frame for the cabin roof. We'll also put the floor in the cabin tomorrow hopefully.

It trips me out how yall work barefoot and shirtless. Fiberglass must really itch.

Not me, but some of the guys here are nuts. I have a nice pair of boots and I usually even walk around with a mask on...

Capt, how much of a riser do you need for your exhaust system? Will the riser be as high as the motor cover then come down to your existing exit? I imagine when backing down on fish you need the riser to prevent back flow into engine manifold. Really enjoying your re-build! Thanks!

I usually put about 6 - 9 inches up over the turbo, but we also do a surge tube. Which is like you make the tube longer than it needs to be and then let the exhaust connect to the exhaust in the middle. That lets the surge go down and hit the end of the tube instead of climbing it. Does that make sense?

http://www.queposfishadventure.com/Quepossurge.jpg

What engine are you going to use for power?

Never seen a surge tube before! Great idea...let the salt water slosh around in the tube instead of climbing the riser. Learned something today...thanks. Do you use a flapper over your exhaust port?

The flapper is one of those ideas that sounds great but does nothing at all. I mean really nothing, don't even try it, they should be illegal to sell types of deal.

This one is going to get a freshly rebuilt 6BTA 330hp cummins.