Welcome to FassēCo.
Husband and wife duo, Read and Julie, started working to revive Read’s fathers ‘79 Boston Whaler and quickly fell in love with the art of restoring marine classics. All of their down time is spent backcountry fishing in the Everglades, island hopping in the Bahamas, and most recently floating on the rivers and lakes of Tennessee as they’ve recently found themselves “land locked” in Nashville.
Why a Whaler?
Read grew up learning how to boat on his family’s 1979 15’ Whaler well before he could drive a car. He learned how to swim, fish, waterski, and wakeboard all from the same boat. He’d even pull the plug out, fill it with water to make the wake bigger so he and his friends could get “more air”. From the lakes of Northern Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico that boat saw it all. It only made sense that 40 years after the boat was originally purchased that Read and wife Julie take ownership and restore it back to it’s original glory.
Our hunt for the classics.
We hand pick donor boats from all over the eastern US. Each hull is carefully inspected for structural integrity before coming home to our shop. We scour the vessel for signs of water intrusion, wood rot and foam degradation. While wood is less common in modern-day boat building, every classic vessel built before the 90’s will have wood in the deck, transom and stringers. Since these areas are a boat’s backbone it’s absolutely imperative to verify their integrity before beginning any restorations.
The restoration process.
Once the structural integrity is verified each hull gets completely stripped of all hardware and old rigging. Hulls are then solvent washed and sanded to remove years of contaminates and wear. Every crack, crevice, and screw hole are ground out, re-glassed and filled with 2-part marine grade fillers from 3m and Alexseal. After countless hours of shaping, sanding and fairing, the hull is ready for priming and topcoat. We use only the highest quality marine 2-part polyurethane finishes from Alexseal applied in just the perfect environmental conditions to ensure a proper cure, brilliance and durability for years to come.
Our rigging.
Due to the initial quality of many of the OEM American made parts, we restore as much of the original hardware as possible. Our goal is to remain true to every component that made these vessels classic to begin with while upgrading the electrical and propulsion systems to today’s marine reliability standard.
We refit the boats with solid hardwood interiors finished with the highest quality marine grade products available from Alexseal, Epifanes, Pettit, Interlux and Semco. All metalwork is meticulously stripped, shaped, chromed and polished back to life.
Every boat is then completely rewired and fused for simplicity. New fuel lines, tank and Racor fuel water separators are installed as well as Teleflex hydraulic steering. We then power match the hull to Yamaha 4-stroke outboards with PowerTech stainless propellers for the ultimate in performance and reliability.