Advice on a first rebuild - '78 DuraNautic

[Botch77]

Hi folks! This forum has been a terrific source of information lately, but I'm green enough that I'd like to reach out for some specific suggestions.

I got tired of being stuck on shore, so picked up my first boat - a 1978 DuraNautic Coastal 13. It's in pretty solid shape structurally (if not cosmetically), but I most definitely want to do some customizing. Keeping in mind of course, that while I'm moderately handy, I'm also completely new at this and prone to get carried away. As far as an overall plan, my initial thoughts were to take out the center seat, put in a floor, put in a front deck/storage to just a bit past the existing front bench, and MAYBE put in storage along the sides (Kinda like this - https://tinyurl.com/y3fko2a7). The overall application will be mostly lake/reservoir fishing, occasionally venturing into the Connecticut river if it seems like I can handle it, also very occasional trips to the bay/salt marshes chasing blues and fluke. Will run both a 9.9 and trolling motor.


At the moment, my more specific questions are

1) Does that even sound reasonable as an overall strategy, or is there something else I should consider?
2) For a floor - note in the 3rd photo that this thing has a fairly flat bottom, but also does not have ribs. Do you think I could get away with plywood/carpeting right on the hull, or frame and raise it up a bit? How would you attach a floor? I REALLY don't want to rivet anything through the hull if I can avoid it.
3) It's about 50" wide at bench height; do you think putting in side storage would make it too cramped, given that the whole point is to open it up a bit? Alternatively, I could just cut the center bench to a walk-through and leave the sides for storage boxes.

That should be plenty to think about for now. Thanks in advance fellas, always tons of good advice around here.

 

[sonny.barile]

I had one up until a couple of years ago. They are great boats for the size. If you look in my signature you can see I added a floor, a bow deck for a trolling motor, and had a 9.9 then a 15 on the back. The 15 was overkill and had that boat running as fast as you would ever want to go in it.

I would not remove the center bench. These boats have no supports other then the ones in the benches and are welded. It will definitely bow in the middle.

The floor was painted plywood wrapped in carpet. I just laid them in and the weight of the boards kept then in place without issue. This way they could be removed to dry up when needed.
The bow deck was also made the same way. I used self tapping stainless screws to attach some aluminum angle to the rail and bolted the deck to it. Held the troller well enough. There is a support shelf in the bow. I cut a piece of ply to fit it and carpeted that too. I silicone it to that shelf and that’s where I put the battery box. (Group 24). It had a strap to keep it in place. I added a quick connect plug for the motor so I could remove the battery for charging and added a kill switch under the bow deck.

I loved the boat so I upgraded to a bigger Duranautic. I have the 16 foot side console model sitting in my driveway.