My 1987 Fisherman 20

[Night_Sailor]

Let me introduce myself. I'm a retired Air Force vet, who has worked as a licensed Captain for many years. I deliver boats throughout the east coast and also teach boat handling and sailing part time. For the last 15 years I've been doing a lot of boat repair work, for my own boats, more or less continuously for that whole time.

I am glad to be part of the V20 community.

I have been wanting a Center Console for a long while. I found one last month with a painted aluminum T-top and a galvanized single axle trailer for $1300 and bought it. The T-Top is what sold me. Here it is before I started work on it.



The motor is a Johnson 235 and it needs some work, it was not running and I found a wire to the stator cut. Some bit of plastic blew off and cut it. I need to investigate or perhaps toss the motor. I'd like to try and get it running as I have good mechanical skills. I've rebuilt many a chevy motor, and a few diesels over the years. It looks pretty simple to me--no valves to adjust. As much as I'd love a new two stroke motor, I don't have the funds for that. One of the pistons looks like it was running hot. I'm thinking about taking the whole thing apart. Is this a waste of my time? Or should I start looking for another motor?

The hull is in good shape. A few nicks in the bow and some scraps on the starboard side. Lots of poor (visually) patch work.

It looks like someone did some work on the fuel tank. The area around the center console is sealed with fiberglass tape. I know about replacing tanks and can get one made up by a shop I use for this purpose, if needed. I will probably pull it out and inspect it.

I have been making the trailer road worthy and put new springs, hugs, bearing, tires, and new lights and wiring. Registration might be a problem, I'll be looking into that next week.

I plan to re-wire the boat next and pull the tank, and fix all the sloppy looking patches of holes all about the boat. I hate gel coating.

My first question is the Gelcoat does not look white.

Does anyone know what tints to use? Is there a standard Gelcoat tint that Wellcraft uses on these boats. Is it just white and showing some age related discoloration? I can do the work, but I doubt I'll be able to match the tint without lots of trial and error.

My big question is the transom. It appears solid, I plan to pull off some of the trim and check it out. There are not splash boards, but there are a few hooks to hold a board in place. It appears the transom was cut down from 25" to 20" to accommodate this motor. This concerns me. The previous owner tells me it was not a problem. I can fix this although it would be a fair amount of work. You can see the notch cut in the transom in the below photo.



Do I need to be worried about the boat being swamped from the back?

Could this possibly sink the boat?