2013 bass boat stringer repair

[Lrs184]

Hello everyone,

I will start with some background. I am not an expert by any means with boat repair but I have resources and know people who are mechanically inclined and have experience with gelcoat and fiberglass.

​​​ I have a 2013 nitro bass boat that needs to be repaired. It's stringers are delaminating which means the cap is going to have to come off. This is not a scenario where I can simply sell off for get rid of the boat and just get a new one.

I need some genuine advice with this on how to get the cap off which appears to be one of the harder things to do with a newer bass boat with how they adhere the cap to the hull on newer boats.

I know a lot of people simply jump to trying to get rid of a boat or do a hull swap to a different boat with the motor but those are not options right now due to reasons that I don't want to discuss on here. If someone here has gone through the process of pulling a cap off of a newer bass boat or perhaps even a nitro z series I would love to hear your experience and what was good and what went wrong and what you would do different.

What can I expect? Any advice is appreciated

 

[Woodonglass]

Has she been abused?? Kinda Unusual for the later model boats to have this issue unless she's really been left out in the elements or abused on the water. Bass Boat caps are notoriously difficult to remove especially at the transom. Sometimes the entire top cap is One Piece "Tub" construction and then it's a real issue. We have some Bass Boat guys on the forum so I'm sure they'll pitch in.

This video shows how they build em now but not sure if this was the method in 2013 but I'm betting it was similar. As you can see the top is ALL one piece.

https://www.nitro.com/quality.html

 

[Lrs184]

Nope. Garage kept always, drain plug always pulled so no water was ever left in the boat even by accident. Very long unfortunate story.

Yeah.. I feel like getting the cap off is going to be an issue. I'm hoping I can land some guidance here.