Whew! Finally am now "complete" with "major projects"!!! There will be plenty of minor things to fiddle with over time, but I'm done occupying the entire garage. (my wife is also happy with that). Got the carpet installed this weekend. It was hard to get perfect cuts and perfect fits because this boat is fairly lacking in exact angles and precision/perfection. Did my best though.
Front casting deck and hatch:
Boat seats finally installed!
Side boat view with seats:
interior view from stern to bow:
comparison views:
old:
new:
Got it finished just in time to take out on the Kentucky River for memorial day weekend.
Boat tied up to dock at river fish camp cabin:
Boat beached at my favorite fishing rapids:
Despite having several youngsters tag along on the boat ride, my brother and I even caught a few trout in the tailwaters where the boat is beached in the above photo.
Boat performed well with two exceptions - the transducer is about a 1/2 inch too low and was throwing up a crazy amount of spray at high speeds. Should be an easy fix.
on GPS, when I got up to about 28 mph, the boat began porpoising pretty bad. I will have to take it out again to experiment with different angles on the motor. I may not have had it down flush against the transom. not sure. Had a lot of family out there, though, and didn't have opportunity to try all kinds of different settings. That was a shame, though, because I really wanted to know how fast it would go. I hit 28 mph against a very stiff river current and I don't think I was quite wide open on the throttle.
We'll see.
Anyway, glad to reach this point and thanks to members of this board for input and inspiration.
