Transom repair in Sacramento area

A friend of mine has a 1986 Bayliner Cuddy (19 Ft) outboard that has transom rot. It appears that water entered at the engine mount bolts and propagated down to the drain plug. The center (wood part) of the transom has no structural integrigy and it's only the gelcoat that's keeping everything together.

We've looked around at repair places and as you can imagine, it's a pretty expensive fix at the businesses. I'm looking for a private party that is good at doing this type of work if one exists in the area. The boat was bought for about $3,500 and we can't see putting 6-7 grand in to it.

Any pointers to such a person would be appreciated.

Thanks,

barry

Another alternative is to dry it out and saturate it with thinned epoxy. Drill rows of downward slanted holes in the transom from the inside in the problem area. Go sideways each way until you get to solid wood. A hole every couple inches and a row every couple inches. Park it in a garage for at least a couple months with fans blowing on it all the time. Over the whole winter is even better. Then mix batches of epoxy thined with 5-10% alcohol. Keep filling the lowest row of holes till they won't take any more. Make several runs at this row allowing it to sit a day or so between each. Make sure you do not have any leaks at the bottom and if you do you will need to seal them with unthinned epoxy. You should see that you can pour lots into the row at first but after a few runs then mixture just sits in the holes. Then mix an epoxy / filler batch and plug that set of holes. You can put a piece of masking tape across them to keep the filler in and flat. Once that drys repeat at the next row of holes above. Takes a few weeks to do this. Us Composites has decently priced epoxy. Get a gallon. This is not a professional repair but it's simple. I'd not take it off shore in foul weather but you're not going to do that in a 19' bayliner anyway.