Thread: Updating and Upgrading My Skeeter F-80 Strada

I was in a hurry yesterday, dropped the boat in, went to test the 22in Hydro prop on it since the 20in spun up too much but didn't change the hub out spinning the hub teeth. I have a pile of props so for now I put a 21in Ballistic by Michigan on it for now. The Solas hubs are a different design but I wasn't paying attention. Too much going on and pushing too hard and you get dumb stuff like that as a product. I went to knock the Evinrude hub out of the 20in prop and slightly crowned the brass spline so two hubs were trashed yesterday. I have a 20 ton press and should have used it after a few strikes of the drift didn't move it. The fish are going to have to wait till I'm caught up on other responsibilities. Heavy incoming tide yesterday but the 21in Ballistic prop spun up to 5400 @ 42.5mph. Not great. The Solas Hydro does not provide as much bow lift which bow lift is not needed with this setup so the efficiency numbers went down using the Ballistic prop.

Went for the first official crappie fishing trip day before yesterday. Hopped up on the front deck. Plopping down in the seat while it was positioned in the original seat base was a mistake as the seat just leaned over. Not a large deck by any means, I was heading for the water



I wanted to re-carpet this boat anyway so after ripping the carpet up I could get the full view of the problem. What a mess, no Stainless Steel here.



First thing is to keep the rest of the boat clean. Skeeter recessed the seat base then applied gelcoat to blend the seat base to the deck before carpeting it. Well this just made the seat base rust worse.



After grinding all the cracked gelcoat flat and cleaning out very well the deck area and rim around where the original seat base was located I cut 3 layers of Stitch Mat to fit and fill the void. You can see in the pictures how the Stitch Mat gradually gets larger as the layers stack. The outside weaves were pulled also to easy blending.



Mixing some polyester resin (I'm out of Epoxy resin right now) up I laminated the first 3 layers in place allowing enough time for the resin to flash and cool before continuing.



Switching to Chop Mat shredding the edges first layering Chop to just about fill.



Finishing the repair for overnight curing I use Rage Gold Body Filler augmented with Polyester resin to fair.

Looks like you fixed another challenge correctly once again. Glad you didn’t go swimming when it failed.
Bon Temps!!

Another problem, another repair. You da’ man Rojo!

Jack of all trades for sure. Did you have a bar of soap?

Dang! Gotta love old boats!

Originally Posted by jjue1979

Dang! Gotta love old boats!

Yes but having 5 of them can get overwhelming at times. I block sanded the repair but do not have any white gelcoat on hand. I will color match the gelcoat since I have unfaded gelcoat to match a color chip to and order a quart of tinted gelcoat from Fiberglast.com.



It's all very smooth and level now.



I was going to cut the original hitch off and weld a locking hitch on but this was easier. Welding a piece of chain to the trailer is too easy. All I have to do now is paint the chain. I have replacement safety chains with snap hooks already, just need to install them.

Originally Posted by BON TEMPS

Looks like you fixed another challenge correctly once again. Glad you didn’t go swimming when it failed.
Bon Temps!!