'74 Tsunami Pilothouse and Rehab

[Handful in NC]

This was a '74 Tsunami donated to a community college that I purchased early last year with plans to rehab the boat and add a fully enclosed hardtop. The process is nearly complete and it's time to post some photos. The comments and info avaiable in the CSC forums have been of immeasurable help.

[Handful in NC]

The first step was putting the boat where I could work on it out of the weather. With the top removed, it fit into the garage under my house, which would create some significant issues later. The boat is on a dolly I made to facilitate moving it around.



A good friend did some photo editing to see what a metal supported hard top with soft enclosure would look like. The proportions in the following mock-up are off as there is inadequate headroom. The real top would have to be much taller.


After too many iterations to present here, this is the final mock-up and became the guide for the end result.


Bill Potter was kind enough to offer an opinion, and actually sent a plan with a hard top superimposed on the standard layout. He suggested acrylic windows for less weight, but I opted for glass for better durability. Weight should not be as much of a concern with the I/O being replaced with an OB on a bracket.

[Handful in NC]

With a plan decided and the boat inside, the next order of business was to strip it. My wife named it the "hole-y boat" for obvious reasons.











The little boxes were a mess inside, and I decided to make them disappear. More later on that decision. I love a good grinder. If only you could put back as fast as you can take away!



The boat area in the garage was isolated with a plastic wall and fans exhausting out a window to keep the dust out of the house above, and my marriage intact.





There must have been 50 lbs of wire removed, and boxes of old parts and fasteners. I don't think anything installed had ever been removed.

[heynow2203]

Are you going to be redoing decks?

[Handful in NC]

Yes. They are solid and did not require tearing out. The original plan was to cover the interior deck and the top of the front consoles with a synthetic teak (NuTeak, PlasTeak, or similar), and I may still do this at some time in the future. The cost, with so many other things competing for my dollars, was too high for now, so these areas are being sprayed with a white/tan spatter finish gel coat, which hides minor flaws well and reduces fairing time.

I would be interested in hearing if anyone else has any experience or knowledge of those synthetic teak products.

[Bryan A.]

Cool, looking forward to the progress.

[Entourage]

looking at this brings back memories.

[Handful in NC]

I remember seeing your boat in the forum, and it gave me some ideas for my boat. That starboard side is a bit drafty for my needs!

Did you have any issues with water running forward and not draining out the back?

[Handful in NC]

After the first round of patching holes...





Some people on this forum make things look so easy. For me, making a few hatches took a looong time and working with epoxy was a challenge. I messed up a LOT. I used some regular resin ONCE and while that boat factory smell excites me, it had the opposite effect on my wife. One disadvantage of a garage under a house! One of my boating fantasies was to be able to get to things easily for installations/servicing and have as much storage space as possible, so there are big hatches where the I/O engine used to be.

[Entourage]

Yeah if i didnt do the type of work i do i would have made both sides the same. No water drainage problem all the over spray seems to go the stern.