70’s Starcraft 14’ Seafarer “By Golly”

[DaleH]

Glad to hear it worked for you!

 

[Makaw]

I’ve picked away at a few items since I last posted. New transom boards are glued, haven’t cut to shape yet. Jack plate boards are also glued.

Outboard cowl is painted. Not keeping OEM colors. Cowl is grey and will get black Johnson stickers. Lower until will hopefully be black (if I can manage to clean it enough for paint. So much grease buildup!)

Transom has two coats of blue over primer. Might do one more. Bottom just got primer today. Couldn’t prime the sides because I had to fill some holes and will have to wait for epoxy to cure. Bottom will be grey. Sides and transom will be navy blue.

I might actually miss the OEM green for sentimental reasons! She needs a modern look though.

 

[Makaw]

I managed to sneak in the first bottom coat after work.

 

[Makaw]

Final coat is on the bottom! The sides have all the old holes filled and now have primer coat on. The green is slowly disappearing…

 

[Makaw]

Color combo teaser!

 

[Makaw]

The plan was to clean up the inside of the boat today to have it ready for painting in the next day or so, but I ran into a snafu with my angle grinder that put it out of commission. I switched gears and worked on the new transom instead. Transom is now roughly shaped (needs a bit of finish sanding), fitted and drilled, and will be getting sealer this weekend.

 

[Makaw]

Well, cleaning up the inside of the boat was absolutely the worst part of the entire process. 50 years of grime and grit didn’t come off easily. A colorful variety of words slipped out of my mouth. Thankful that is now behind me and I’m now able to start painting the inside. New transom board is currently getting sealed as well.

 

[Makaw]

BOOM. Inside paint done!

 

[airshot]

Cant wait to see it all together, like you color combo...

 

[TriBull]

Great project! You’re doing an excellent job. Here are before & after pics of my 1974 12” Seafarer.

 

[Makaw]

Thanks @airshot and @TriBull!

Got a fair amount of reassembly done yesterday. I’m going to try and document the process a bit better.

First step is installing the front deck.

 

[Makaw]

Most of the mods to-date I built as assemblies so the steering console installs next as an assembly and goes back on quite easy.





The black angle brackets do screw to the deck but are only there as “stops” for the inner panel.

 

[Makaw]

Side console assembly goes in next. Fits between the steering console and boat hull, and slides into the existing bench support.

 

[Weldorthemagnificent]

Nice work!

 

[Makaw]

Sticker day!

 

[airshot]

Awesome !!

 

[Kismet]

Nice, rich color combinations.

Well done, Sir.

 

[Makaw]

@Weldorthemagnificent @airshot and @Kismet - thanks guys I really appreciate it!

Here’s a few pictures of the jack plate. Outboard is now installed and at maximum height the cavitation plate sits perfectly in plane with the bottom of the hull. I’m interested to see how this changes the handing characteristics of the boat. I’m splashing it this weekend to walleye fish locally - can’t wait!

 

[Weldorthemagnificent]

Good luck and let us know. I've seen where using a jack plate allows for running the anticavitation plate slightly higher than the hull bottom.

 

[Makaw]

Well, I finally splashed the boat this past weekend to get some walleye fishing in! As soon as we get some nice weather I'll take comparison pictures of the paint job before & after. I put in a bunch of work to reinstall the interior and wiring to make it water-ready. I wasn't able to do any of the additional upgrades that are still planned, so I put the old rear bench sat back in. The two big remaining upgrades are the back seat/deck (not sure of my plans yet) and adding some interior utility LED lights. I'll pick away at those as time allows.

The jack plate worked great and is rock solid, but definitely required some tweaking for boat performance. I started it at maximum height for my first trip out. This put the cavitation plate in perfect alignment with the bottom of my hull. The nose ran a bit high at open throttle and it struggled to hit 17 mph (loss of ~2 mph from before jack plate). It also had some issues under moderate cornering where I lost stability (prop breach? cavitation?). After a day of hard fishing Saturday I opted to drop the jack plate by about 1" and also trimmed the motor in one notch (manual trim). This made a huge difference on Sunday. Boat planed better and ran much better at WOT, easily hitting 20-21 mph even headed upstream. Cornering issues were resolved. I think I found the sweet spot!

The only bad thing is that I put a nice large scrape in the brand new grey bottom paint first time up river Saturday. Every spring there is new junk to avoid, (submerged logs, etc.) so I'm always especially careful my first time out and maintain eagle eyes on surface disturbances, but I missed this sneaky submerged log and she got me. Oh well, it was bound to happen at some point. Got that out of the way.

Fish dinner was excellent, by the way