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Following Hurricane Charlie Wicked Wanda’s amas were beaten up. Damage to the glass surface had allowed water to get into the tortured plywood decks and hulls causing delamination of the wood. A decision was made to splash a glass skin off the Starboard ama using polyester resin to make two hulls. The hull splash was done in two steps for the amas so the hull could be lengthened to 15 feet. The hull bow splash extended 2/3 of the way to the stern and incorporated an extended vertical top side forward for later attachment of the ama bow surface foil. This Ama bow section was then pulled off the original hull and slid forward 3 feet. The stern half of the new fiberglass skin was then splashed on the aft 2/3 of the original ama and, in the process, bonded to the forward section. The bow surface foil (shaped like a “Spitfire” wing) was then jigged up and attached to the extended topsides at the bow. The entire “male molded” part was then faired. Following the initial fairing using Duraglass (polyester body filler using milled glass rather than talc as a thickening agent) a layer of 4 oz fiberglass and epoxy resin with red dye is used to seal the hull. Epoxy thickened with micro balloons is used for final fairing. The second ama (starboard) was also splashed on the temporarily repaired starboard Ama using the same process described above. The fairing is no easy task. Several weeks were consumed in this fabrication, filling, sanding, fairing, filling, sanding, fairing, filling...well, you get the picture.
Following excision of the damaged, delaminated original plywood deck and hull parts the new fiberglass hull skin was bonded to the port ama “skeleton”. This port skeleton was reasonably rigid and stable because the aka structural bulkheads, gunwales and keel were intact. To assure no twisting would occur during the bonding of the new glass hull and plywood decks the skeleton was attached to the short aka tubes being used to suspend the main hull in its rolling cradle so alignment could be maintained.
The starboard Ama had suffered much more sever delamination and dry rot than the port ama. All that was left of the “skeleton” after removal of the damaged/rotted plywood was the forward cross beam mount/station and the keel. The gunwales and structure for attaching the aft cross beam were not salvageable. Following the fabrication of the new solid glass hull skin/bow surface foil new gunwales were bonded inside the fiberglass starboard Ama skin. These were made from treated 2” X 6” X 8’ resawn to 1 1/2” X 1/4” X 8’ battens using my big band saw. Three layers of these 1/4” battens were glued up with staggered scarfs. A new aft aka mounting structure for this ama was created, the remaining forward cross beam reciever/bulkheads/keel were hung on the short main hull crossbeams and the new fiberglass skin bonded in place so proper alignment would be maintained. Several new bulkheads were then added and new epoxy sealed thin plywood decks were bonded to the new gunwales. The resulting amas were lighter than the original wooden hulls.
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