Is there wood in my transm?

[Bigfish]

I now own the boat and the survey said no issues with the transom. Boatyard owner said he was afraid to replace bolts on swim step for fear there might be rot requiring major expensive repairs. Surveyor did point out to me where the head of one bolt was missing (on the inside). It looked like it had leaked at one point and all the bolts looked new but there was no water coming in when we looked at it in the water.
I was under the impression a 1981 Taiwan hull was solid fiberglass.
This is a sun deck model so maybe there is wood above the transom but i'M scared about the integrity of the transom now... Any thoughts?

 

[Marin]

Some boats have solid fiberglass hulls, some have cored hulls. It's certainly possible that your boat has a plywood core in the transom. The only way I know of to find out if nobody credible can tell you for sure is to drill a hole through it and see if wood comes out. Or pull an existing through-bolt out of it and use a dental tool or whatever to pull material off the sides of the hole to see if any of it's wood.

Or maybe there is a high-tech way of determining this, like ultra-sound.

 

[boatpoker]

It is extremely unlikely that you have a cored transom but hard to be definitive without knowing what kind of boat we are talking about. I've surveyed dozens of TT's and have never seen a cored hull or transom. It is however, quite likely that you have wood backing plates (encapsulated or not) for swim platform bolts and they may be softening.

 

[Bigfish]

That's what I wanted to hear BoatPoker.. I think the yard owner wanted to scare me into telling him to leave everything the way it is and I'd keep an eye on it, mainly because he's swamped and needs to get my boat out of his yard asap to make room for the new work. It worked! All I could picture was an image of a guy restoring a '55 Chris Craft Connie recently. He had it out of the water for a week in the summer and had sheets over the sides of the hull that they kept wet as he worked to make a "minor," transom corner repair. Only to fine the rot was way more widespread than he guessed. Looked like a nightmare.......... I think mine is just the rotten wood backing plate. I just talked to the PO and he said it was like that when he bought it just a year ago. I though he'd had it longer than that but his biz too a dump and he had to sell. Said it never leaked in the year he had it... Feeling much better... I'll go to the yard in the morning and replace that one bolt with and add an aluminum backing plate for it.