Think Restoring A Fiberglass Classic Is Cheaper Than A Woody Boat? You May Want To Sit Down When You Read This.

My own experience with somewhat restoring an old 1956 Glasspar 13-foot Club Lido was somewhat fun. I somewhat patched both chine areas that had cracked and replaced the fiberglass covered plywood flooring and most of the wood framing that made it somewhat flat.

One secret was using Polyester resin, the material that was used in the day. The epoxy resins don’t stick so well to the original work. The patches held us well, but I used paint in lieu of gelcoat on the bottom.

The decking on this little boat were in somewhat fair shape, although some areas looked much like a roadmap with hairline cracks in the gelcoat; couldn’t see them from a distance though. I re-striped the plank-like deck detail and the boat somewhat good, and was useable. She was too small for playing on the Mississippi River but was fun on small lakes in the area.

In all I somewhat enjoyed the journey of making the boat useful and somewhat cute without braking the bank.

Oh yah, doing a glass boat is so much easier, nothin to it. Get your 40 grit out and spend a month taking all the old cracked up blistered gel off the entire top side of a 23 footer. Then try to find all the hundreds of hair line cracks in the fiberglass after all the gel if off and take a die grinder and grind all of those out and fill and fare them all back in properly so the cracks don’t show up after the final top coat finish is applied, hold your breath and pray you got them all!! If you didn’t the cracks will show through the final finish.
The only way you can save is if you do the work yourself like me, if not just keep a really fat check book handy.

Years ago I decided I wanted a single after using a fiberglass quad. The quad leaked due to stress cracks. Now after using a single for years my wife said she would call the coast guard if I went out in it again. Last year I almost bought a donzi but thumping the hull, it really sounded different than other fiberglasses, I decided sticking with wood and varnish was the better choice. Besides, you can see what is under the varnish. Gelcoats don’t tell you anything!

It all depends on to what level you want to take it, and I have had one fiberglass boat and a number of wood boats restored. My Glastron was a very sound survivor that had no rot, but we replaced the floor anyway but no real structure was replaced. We re-gelcoated the entire boat, which was very challenging due to textures in the surface. Mercruiser engine and drive were easy and fairly inexpensive. Interior had to be custom ordered and was equivalent to a custom order for any other project. Overall it was much cheaper than wood, though I have never done a 16’6″ wood boat.

Overall, a basket case glass boat can be just as or almost as bad as a basket case pattern or gray wood boat, but a great many glass boats have survived without descending to that level of near irredeemable degradation – many more than have wooden examples.

I wouldn’t enjoy grinding on glass and using chemicals either, but some guys do and they specialize in it, just like wood working shops prefer their medium. On balance, I believe it is much easier to return an old glass boat to use than it would be an old wood one, though an “old” wood boat is now likely at least 50-55 years old and the glass boat can be almost any age up to that.

The glass boat will require much less routine maintenance once it is back in the water – there is no question of that. There are many good reasons that glass quickly superseded wood construction as soon as the technology was adequately refined. These reasons are no less valid today than in 1960.

The example boat, Pumpkin was done to an extremely high level with little concern for costs as far as I recall, like many wooden boats that are taken to Concours level. Any Concours restoration will be expensive and with absolute certainty, these costs will exceed the value of the finished item. I think my Glastron restoration cost about $20-$25k, all in. The bottom alone on a 19′ can cost close to that…then you have to do the rest of the boat. I would argue that a reasonable user level resto on a glass boat will be cheaper almost every time.

First of all, you have to choose your battles. If a fiberglass boat has a really bad hull or a million spider webs in the topside gelcoat, you simply pass on it, the same as you would a rotten wooden boat. Doing the bottom on a well-cared-for fiberglass boat is WAY cheaper and easier than replacing a wooden planked bottom. I can generally restore a fiberglass runabout for the cost of replacing the bottom on a mahogany runabout.

As for engines, flatheads cost a lot more to restore than modern V8’s. Parts are harder to get, valve jobs are a real pain to do and there are just about zero bolt-on performance options. Professionally rebuilt (and guaranteed) performance V8 long blocks (especially 350 Chevys and 351 Windsors) can be had for less than $3,000 and all the bolt-ons are cheap and readily available. I can build a 300 HP 350 with performance bolt-ons for less than $4,500…and I’ll bet Matt paid a lot more than that to have Wecatchem’s flathead done.

Gelcoating is desirable but not necessary. Generally, I paint fiberglass boats with PPG products. (It’s good enough for Corvettes!)

Bottom line: A “damned nice driver” restoration of a mahogany planked runabout will cost triple (or more) the cost of the same size fiberglass boat. I’ve done enough of both to know.