Thread: Ski Boat

At thins point paint is the last thing you need to worry about. As a rule paint sticks to good prep and the substrate type doesn't really matter all that much. Hell, you can paint on water if you can get a primer to stick to it and amazingly enough I know of a primer that will leave a paintable surface on a bucket of water , if you do elect to try it.

'Glass over lapstrake (clinker) is almost always a problem starter. This type of planking doesn't lend itself well to 'glass sheathings and "issues" such as rotted planking quickly develop. Without more pictures and more information, we're kind of stuck as to the advice to offer. The pictures aren't very good in showing what's going on, but it looks like you have several problems. These might include fastener looseness, fastener hole rot, frame rot, cracked or broken frames (from one of several reasons), leaking lap seams, rotting laps and rotting planks. I suspect there's more going on, but this is enough for now.

With this level of rot, I would seriously doubt . . .

The Hull itself seems to b ok

. . . particularly in light of the 'glass sheathing on the bottom. This type of damage (shown) usually isn't localized. The best advise I can offer is to have a boat carpenter, one familiar with old power lapstrakes, come out and look her over. It would be best if the boat was stripped of everything not physically attached to the boat, so he can see all the nooks and crannies. He'll need to really see the inside well.