meonline06
Well-known member
Well, continuing my pattern of buying a new boat every two years....I bought a new boat. This time around I picked up an old Ouachita 16' flat bottom. It's 48" across at the bottom of the transom and like all of my old boats....It's a piece of junk. At least the guy I bought it from thought it was. I picked it up along with a trailer that is too small for it, a 40 lb thrust foot controlled trolling motor, and a battery. I actually bought this thing last August, but really haven't done anything with it up until a few weeks ago.
So, when I bought this thing, I didn't really do all of my homework prior to bringing it home. The guy who had it before me worked with metal for a living and had already began tinkering with it. He put in a lot of framing, including removing the old wooden transom and replacing it with metal. At the time I thought that was great and just less work that I was going to have to do. After I got everything home I wanted to get a good look at the trailer, so I went to move the boat to the ground and realized that this thing was way heavier than it should be. Turns out some of the framework the PO had done was steel. Some was aluminum. I'm guessing he just used whatever scrap metal he had left over at work. For the record, I am aware that the steel and the aluminum can react with each other. No, I am not going to remove the steel and start over. I'm sure I will get a few years of fun out of this thing before I will ever run into any problems and as history has proven, I'll have a new boat in a couple years anyway.
This is pretty much how everything looked day 1. At this point I have already finished framing the front deck. I've cut 19/32" plywood to cover everything and have been fishing from it for several weeks. I wanted to test everything out on the water before I cut out the hatches and seal the wood. I also forgot to mention that after doing a leak test there were maybe 5 or 6 rivets (can't remember) that had very slight leaks. I replaced them and haven't had any issues with water leaks while I've been on the water. I'll post a few more pictures soon.
So, when I bought this thing, I didn't really do all of my homework prior to bringing it home. The guy who had it before me worked with metal for a living and had already began tinkering with it. He put in a lot of framing, including removing the old wooden transom and replacing it with metal. At the time I thought that was great and just less work that I was going to have to do. After I got everything home I wanted to get a good look at the trailer, so I went to move the boat to the ground and realized that this thing was way heavier than it should be. Turns out some of the framework the PO had done was steel. Some was aluminum. I'm guessing he just used whatever scrap metal he had left over at work. For the record, I am aware that the steel and the aluminum can react with each other. No, I am not going to remove the steel and start over. I'm sure I will get a few years of fun out of this thing before I will ever run into any problems and as history has proven, I'll have a new boat in a couple years anyway.
This is pretty much how everything looked day 1. At this point I have already finished framing the front deck. I've cut 19/32" plywood to cover everything and have been fishing from it for several weeks. I wanted to test everything out on the water before I cut out the hatches and seal the wood. I also forgot to mention that after doing a leak test there were maybe 5 or 6 rivets (can't remember) that had very slight leaks. I replaced them and haven't had any issues with water leaks while I've been on the water. I'll post a few more pictures soon.