Yeah, don't wrap it around any rocks, but watch those collisions too. g2d knows a lot about hull construction materials and would be quick to point out that there are some very rugged whitewater boats made of fiberglass or fiberglass and Kevlar, but most non-whitewater fiberglass boats aren't built to take hard impacts with rocks. PJC got his boat at a discount because someone tried it out on a lake at a demo event and a wave pushed the boat into a rock as they tried to pull out on shore, leaving a crackly "mushy spot" at the point of impact which also leaked a bit. Of course, you've seen the patches on your boat so you know about the possibility for this kind of damage. On the other hand, as much as some people hate to scrape against rocks if they don't have to, the scratches don't go nearly as deep on fiberglass as they do on Royalex or Poly.
Yeah, at 50# it’s a glass boat. Phil insisted on gel coating the interior to protect Kev from sunlight and hide FG’s ugliness. So mistakes were made.
I will be glad to send you rail configuration, re-rail, gel repair and waterline patch files, email me at charliewilson77@gmail.com and I’ll blow them back electronically. If you’re starting from scratch the rail rabbet angles will save you major headaches.
Thx, GBG and CEWilson Everybody’s so generous with their time and expertise. So good of you all. And I was about to write back to CEWilson and say, “Are you THE Charlie Wilson?” but a look at your profile just answered that for me. Much obliged, sir! I will email you. And thank you!
Great boat For some reason your post appears twice and I replied on the other thread. You’ve already received lots of good advice, but here’s the two cents I posted on the other thread:
Hi, Ken,
I’m in the same boat (in every sense of the word, no pun intended.) I bought a used Starship and it happens to be green as well, only dark olive green. The hull is full of scratches too, but the wood is all in good shape. The original owner took some seriously long river expeditions on it, including one up the Rio Grande from the gulf of Mexico to Del Rio (more than 400 mi.).
Anyhow, just a couple of days ago I sanded all the wood lightly with 220 grit and reoiled with Watco teak oil and it looks great. I only removed the thwarts to work on them. The gunwales and handles stayed on and it was fine. I did find the screws that hold the gunwales together had loosened up a bit over time (the wood shrank with age, I guess), so I just tightened them and that was that.
The gel coat on the outside of the hull is a different story. I don’t know when I will start on that, but I’m sure it will involve wet sanding scratches with very fine sandpaper and polishing compound with an electric polisher.
I love the boat. The only thing I wish I had is the canted cane seat. This one came with a tractor seat, which was too small, and I hated it. So I have a home-rigged web seat built on the original sliding platform, which is flat, not canted. If anyone out there had an accident and destroyed their Starship but the canted cane seat somehow survived, I want it!
There have been two Charlie Wilson's of note. The first was CEO of General Motors before becoming Defense Secretary in the 50s. Hi is widly credited for orienting GM to the efforts needed to win WW2. A great manager; not much of a duck hunter.
The second was a famously womanizing congressman from Texas who funded the Taliban efforts the USSR in Afghanistan, hiding that funding from us all. Holes in cash flow caused the Mujahadin's kids be educated by extreme madrassas in Pakistan, so he's kinda responsible for the mess we're in now. We've all read the book or seen the movie by now and he's dead too.
Strangely, I was on a Dave CVurtis Pine Barrens trip in 1986, sitting by a campfire with a pretty redheaded CIA spook named Pookie, who told me exactly how much trouble was in the shoot for us.
One could argue there is a singer/songwriter by that name of some note, but no others of significance. So it goes.
A word of caution… Like yours, the screws on my Starship loosened over the years and I made a habit of snugging them up annually. They used to creak occasionally to alert me of the need.
Then one cold windy day I was out paddling it. A gust caught the bow and I did a strong bow draw to bring it back in line. Next thing I knew I was swimming. The seat twisted and flexed the sides out enough to allow one side of the seat to fall from its slot. I slid across the seat, hit the gunnal, and was looking up at green water before I knew what happened. (It was also the first test of my spankin’ new Lotus PFD. Worked great, BTW.) I figured out what happened quickly enough when I saw the seat floating nearby. Checked when I got home and, sure enough, the midsection screws had pulled out of the soft aged wood of the outwales slightly.
Those screws that hold the gunnals together also keep the midsection from distorting. With loose screws there’s nothing to keep the sliding seat from going askew and twisting out when you’re really torking on the paddle. I regunnaled it after that and all has been well ever since…
Those canted cane seats can be duped. Email me privately if you’re really interested.
OP, So how did the race go? Respectable run and not dead beat afterwards? Been curious but didn’t want to bring a post to the top just for that if everyone else was moving on.
