TIP: When you replace the underside of your deck, cut the marine plywood into irregular size pieces. (Kinda like a jigsaw puzzle) If you make long seams all in the same place you will create weak points. So by making some large and some small you will avoid that. Then, when you have it all glued in place (Liquid Nails Construction adhesive or it's equivalent) place a thin sheet of fiberglass over the wood so it's permanently sealed against moisture.

Additionally, when you replace the stringers do the same thing with the fiberglass. Water is the enemy of wood. By sealing the wood with fiberglass you avoid any problems in the future. If Wellcraft had done this simple and relatively inexpensive step many more V20's would still be alive instead of sitting in landfills.

My V20 CC has the two bench seats/storage up front instead of the raised deck.

When I remove the cap on mine I've been thinking of making boxes for the 2 storage area so that the foam/stringers are not exposed and making it harder to lose items into the bottom of the hull.

Does anyone know how to upload pictures to the forum from an Android phone? I have a Galaxy Note 3 that has all my pics of the boat restoration so far.

Thanks for the tip Destroyer. I will be rebuilding the floor along with making a few changes to it.

You won't be able to do it directly because your pix are too High Res so the file size is >1 meg. There are some threads about posting pix, try searching, but here is the abbreviated version...


One way, get a Photobucket account online and post them from your phone to there, then copy and paste links to your thread here using Insert Link.

Another way is to email them to yourself as Medium or Large file size (not original size), save them to a folder in your Pictures folder (I have a folder called "email pix" so I can find it easily) and then post them to your thread using Insert Image

1978 V20 hull with cap removed.

Bulkhead behind fuel tank.

Bulkhead forward of the fuel tank.

As you can see in the pics, the bulkheads have little to no fiberglass covering the side facing the tank. Due to no coatings, they are rotted enough for me to push my finger through. I removed some of the foam along the sides today and upon closer inspection, most of the wood in the stringers and bulkheads on sides are 75%-90% gone. Most of the joints were not glassed properly. Large gaps that allowed water and moisture into the wood core. Most of the fiberglass tabs are poorly layed out. Some appear to not have enough resin (dried out) or was left with large wrinkles in the glass not sealing core material. I am not happy with the way it all looks. However, it will all be reworked correctly when I replace all the bad material.

I had a 1984 Wellcraft 180 Fisherman and saw the same thing with the bulkheads next to the hull sides - parts of the plywood was not covered with fiberglass leading to rotting wood. It appears that taking a shortcut or just poor workmanship was a common mode of operation back then.

Thanks for the picture of the hull with top cap removed. How did you get the cap off - forklift or other means?