Boat seems too heavy

[wa6ibu]

Newbee here. Took the boat out of storage to us, a 1994 Regal 182SE I/O, and noticed the springs sagging and axel bent on single axel trailer. Trailer place looked at it and said overloaded and suggested weighing it. I did and it came back 4300lbs for boat+trailer! The dry weight of the boat is 2250lbs and trailer 500lbs. Looking across the other posts about water in the compartments with foam and so drilled explore hole from side inside ski storage and found water at bottom of compartment and wet foam Assuming this is spread throughout, could it account for an extra 1500lbs or so of extra weight to account for the difference? And is there any way to drain out what would be hard to believe almost 200gals of water buried somewhere inside? Thanks.

 

[NoKlu]

Re: Boat seems too heavy

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the only way to get the water out of the foam is to get rid of the foam. It is like a big sponge and will never dry out ,and yes it will be a heavy dirty job. Cut the floor out, dig all the foam out and check the stringers as they may be wet mush as well. You will have to drill in to them as well to see if they are shot. Are there any soft spots in the floor? How long was the boat in storage?

 

[tashasdaddy]

Re: Boat seems too heavy

it is very easy for the foam to absorb that much water.

 

[109jb]

Re: Boat seems too heavy

My little 16 foot Sea Ray has about 12 cubic feet of foam inside it (that's how much it took to replace it). 12 cubic feet is 239 gallons. The foam is mostly air pockets, so if soaked it can weigh almost as much as a gallon of water. Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon. 239*8=1912. If 50% of my foam was soaked (at least that much was) I probably had an extra 1000 pounds. I'll tell you one thing. I took a lot of effort to lift a 50 gallon garbage can of soaked foam to put it in my dumpster. Did it for the first bag, but the rest I just put the bags in the skid steer bucket to dump them.

 

[Numlaar]

Re: Boat seems too heavy

Yes water logged foam can add a ton of weight to the boat, as mentioned, you will be basically looking at a total rebuild to correct the situation...

You just have to now decide if this is something you want to get involved with or not...

If you can do it yourself, and are comfortable with it, like the boat, and the engine is still good, i say go for it. You will end up with a "like new" boat structurally, and it can be built better than it was done at the factory.

However, if you were to have to hire someone to do the work, you may want to ditch it and look for a new(er) boat. To have it rebuilt by someone would cost a small fortune, and you would probably have more expense than just buying something else...

Good luck with whatever you decide!

 

[dodgezilla04]

Re: Boat seems too heavy

glad i stumbled across this thread.. having a planing and top speed problem, the boat is running 10mph slower than it did 5 years ago before it was improperly stored...
18' cuddy cabin. gonna weigh it tomorrow. expecting 3100lbs with boat and trailer, really hoping NOT to see 4000+...