Sea Nymph Striper

Hello everyone! Im looking to purchase my first real tin boat. I have a starcraft mariner that I am in the process of trying to get rid of. I didnt do a good enough job looking underneath it when I bought it. Theres probably 12 small holes plus a bunch of pin holes and pitting. The more bottom paint I took off the worse it got. Anyway Im hoping take two goes much smoother for me. Im not sure that that boat was the right one for me anyway. I have been liking the sea nymph stripers. I was hoping someone with experiance with them can shed some light on how the perform. I like the aluminum boats because of the duribility of the hull and how light they are. Lighter boat smaller moter less maitnance and less gas on the water and towing. Im deffinitly looking for a center console. But im looking for a saltwater worthy boat. I need somthing that can handle the bays and nearshore saltwater. I want to be able to take it out a few miles into the ocean in decent conditions. Shrewsberry rocks if anyone is familier with new jersey. Im upgrading from my kayak. Ive taken my kayak out to shrewsberry rocks multiple times but the days when the conditions are acceptable for that are far and few between. Launching and landing a kayak in the surf is a major pain and comes with the risk of breaking gear and getting hurt. Plus If the weather goes south Id much rather have an outboard than pedal power. I would also really like to be able to go to the mudhole but thats 10 miles offshore. I was wondering if anyone had any experiance with these boats in the ocean. Its my understanding that Its got a wider beam and higher sides than the starcraft. I was wondering if there was any differance in hight between the 17 and 19 foot models. The 19 footers seem much less common. I also heard that the deck is self bailing but I havent been able to confirm that. I would really apreciate any input anyone could give me. Thank you, John

Sea Nymph, Grumman, and Lowe all had issues during the OMC years with corrosion caused by the wood they used. They were using marine plywood that contained cupric sulfate which corroded the aluminum.
Pay special attention between the transom wood and outer skin.
IF its been bottom coated, make sure that coating does not contain copper, that too will eat at the aluminum.

It sounds like you may be looking at sanding and stripping down a good bit of the hull?

Small holes can be filled with JB Weld, using it much like common body filler. Slightly dimple the area, rough it up with course sandpaper and coat with JB Weld, Marine Tex, or any similar epoxy. Always paint over epoxy since it naturally has little UV resistance.

Some pics would help too.

When it comes to the ocean, in my opinion, most smaller aluminum boats are just too light.
I've had my 16ft out a ways but never out of sight of land and only on very smooth days with no storms in sight.
Wide and deep is the ticket, but in the end its about displacement and freeboard.
The Ocean can produce huge waves without warning and a light, shallow hull will do one of two things, either it rides the wave and stays on top, or it swamps and capsizes. It helps if you have enough power to stay on top when running in rough water. If you can't keep up with the waves, your more likely to get swamped.

I had a buddy who fished way out off shore with a 15ft trihull for years. We never knew where he was going and never took anyone along. (He was 80 then), then one day his wife called and said he went fishing but never came back when he had said he would. He was four hours late by then. After some digging through his stuff in his garage we found a note book where he was marking where he caught certain fish, we got hold a buddy with a 35ft center console that had a modern radar system and we went out searching. We found him 33 miles offshore drift fishing while tinkering with his motor that failed to start. It turns out his fuel filter, which was a screw on style, had rusted through, and he couldn't get fuel to the motor. He had run the battery down trying to start it and had resorted to pulling the V4 Evinrude over with a rope that he made by stripping down a piece of his anchor rope.

I spent 20 minutes in his boat that day by passing his fuel filter and getting his motor running so we didn't have to either tow his boat or abandon it there. Once running we followed him back into the marina where he launched. The guy was insane when it came to big waves, he would crash waves like that little thing was indestructible. We watched him the whole way in pounding that boat as hard as he could the whole way. It had hull cracks with patches all over it, broken seats, two or three layers of plywood on the floor and was likely water logged from years of being outside without a cover. being a bow rider didn't help it any out there either as every drop that came over the bow ended up in the boat. To his benefit, he did have four 1,500 gph bilge pumps in it but if he ran them all the battery and charging system couldn't keep up.
He ran that boat a few more times after that but I think his wife's nagging put an end to his crazy fishing trips, and the $480 fuel bill my buddy handed him for going after him that day.

He's long gone now but he apparently regularly was running that 15ft boat out that far and even further. When he passed his wife asked me to get rid of his boat, when I brought it home to cut it up, I found more of his notes and compass headings and he had points marked over 100 miles off shore.
He had put two 60 gallon fuel tanks in the boat, one on each side, combined with the factory keel tank that held 40 gallons. The two added tanks were built into seat boxes on which both seats were mounted. the lids were reversible by simply lifting them off the tank and turning them around so he could fish facing rear ward. He had a shelf that would fold out on the port side that would turn the right tank box into a place to lay down and sleep. Apparently he'd set his lines and take a nap out there in a 15ft boat. No telling how long he had been doing it but the boat was a 1971 model, and the he had pictures of a 1950's even small, MFG on his garage wall.

I had an 89 Sea Nymph, a 17ft aluminum bass boat, modified V style hull. It came with a 70hp motor
I got it in 1994 after buddy went through a divorce and had to sell everything. (The boat was sort of a gift for helping him save everything else from the wife).
I had it for about 10 years at about 7 or 8 years I started seeing blisters in the paint around the top corners of the transom, I didn't mess with them but soon they popped and turned into finger sized holes. At that point I figured I needed to do something. I took a nail on a stick and poked around all over the transom and a around a few spots up on the bow where the fore deck met the hull. It was rotten anywhere the wood touched the aluminum. The transom panel had eaten into the inside of the transom on both sides, the floor had eaten a strip out of the hull across the front. This is a boat that never saw saltwater, it lived solely on a lake in PA. back then.
I tore the thing apart and ended up making a complete new transom panel and welding it in place and I sandblasted, and welded in patches on the inside of the hull up front filling the outer skin with epoxy filler. I gutted the whole boat and tossed every piece of wood that it had. I replaced the transom with plain exterior ACX plywood, of which I laminated four sheets of 3/8" ply with epoxy to make up the new panel, then I made up a motor set back bracket and added the proper reinforcements to handle a larger motor, I then hung a super clean Johnson 115hp on the back. The V4 made that thing scary fast, especially on a day with just a bit of chop on the lake.

I redid all the decks in aluminum and the dash was done with PVC sheeting. I re-upholstered the seats with two tone gray and blue vinyl and tossed all the pink/and light blue color schemes it had from the factory. I repainted the hull upside down with an epoxy based paint in a silver/gray color and instead of carpet on the main floor I used a spray in rubber coating in light gray, and I put dark gray carpet on the fore and aft casting decks. After all that I ran it for another 12 years but sold it when I moved here. It was again getting a bit aged looking and I didn't want to do the same thing twice so I let it go. The corrosion issues though never came back, once the wood was gone, so was the problem.

Origninaly the plan was to just give up on the boat I have now and get a sea nymph instead. Im going to try and use marine tex to salvage the boat I have now.