Anyone Planing any Improvements for Next Season...

Bamby

New member
Our boat for being freshly redone actually worked out quite well for the most part. But their is one concern we had while rebuilding her that has raised her head and sort of demands some attention. Our Pontoon Houseboat came to us with the normally seen two pontoons and we added a third one. Well the third pontoon is significantly shorter than the other two therefor it displaces water at a different point which is right under the cabin of course. This is a non-issue at the put-put speeds we generally run at 90 % of the time, but when the occasion arises we want to open her up we're getting some water intrusion into the cabin area itself. As a rule I'd rather not have water flowing around in the interior cabin so I'm giving strong consideration as to installing under-skinning on her before floating her this spring. Actually as a added benefit it should quiet the boat down quite a bit also by stopping the water from pounding on the cross-members when underway.

Anyone else care to share any of your proposed improvements....
 

rickforth

New member
My 1978 26' Pacemaker is always in need of repairs.
A new reduced size table (30" Round) for my cabin has been made from 5/4 pine and stained mahogany red to match the decor. A new bathroom shelf. Had my AM & FM CD player repaired, (new tuner under warranty). Will finally get around to properly installing the temperature sensor for my fish finder as it has been coiled up in my bilge for a year. Knowing the temperature of that area of the bilge has not helped me catch more fish. Re sealing the windscreen of the flybridge as the previous job was done with poor quality sealant. Waterproof old dying flybridge canvas cover.
Wax,--- Zincs,--- Wax and more wax. I cannot wait as we have had real winter on Long Island. The Sportsmans show is this weekend and that is always a breath of fresh air in the dead of winter.
 

Doc

Liquid Addiction
Staff member
Good post Bamby.
No improvments planned other than to scrub my decks the first chance I get in the spring. Putting her away last fall made the back deck in particular more of a mess than usual.
Just today I stopped by and ran power to the battery charger, and set a timer so that the chrager is only on 5 hours a day. Later I plan to back it down to two hours a day. It's 'supposed' to shut off but sometimes seems to overcharge the batteries and I want to avoid that possiblity. I don't want to bake the batteries. I have 3 of them @ 80 bucks apiece they can get expensive.
 

Bamby

New member
Since new we've always stored our other boat in a local fairgrounds and one of their requirements was removing the batteries from anything stored there. They state on their paperwork that batteries are the primary cause of potential fires and they wanted to eliminate that hazard. I always removed all batteries from seasonal equipment anyway, it's just easier to maintain them in the garage as needed anyway. There is also the peace of mind that my property is probably a lot safer in their facility because of their rule so it's a win / win situation IMO.

Rickforth,

Sounds as if you were to have a day off along with some decent weather to go along with it you could probably knock that list off, except for all that waxing of course. And hopefully your fish finder will never display any fish swimming around in your bilge. :thumb:
 
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Doc

Liquid Addiction
Staff member
Interesting. I've never heard that about batteries.
I'm going to ask about it (and quote you) in a new thread so I dont' run this one way off track. Thanks for the info.
 

Crums

Wakeboarder Extraordinaire
It's that time again!
Aside from my Wetbike project, I am upgrading my entire stereo system on our Ski Nautique (which I started to do last year but, never finshed). I currently have 2 amplifers pushing a subwoofer and 2 speakers on the tower with the head unit pushing the 4 high and midrange speakers. I'm going to buy 2 4channel amps, 1 to run highs and midrange(which will be new as well) and the other to run tower speakers and sub.
I plan on upgrading the alternator to a higher amp output , as well as adding a power capacitor for the amps.
I'm looking at head units now, trying to decide whether or not to have it sirius satalite ready or not. Seeing as how you can get satalite on smart phones, I don't want to waste any money on a feature like that if I can plug in to the ipod jack and play it there.

It should be a pretty jamming stereo when I'm done.
 

Bamby

New member
Well I'm not sure anyone would call it an upgrade maybe it's more like a necessary repair. It was late in the season when we actually pulled our boat and discovered a leak. :eek2: We hoped to have it repaired before winter weather set in but unfortunately winter set in early and that didn't happen. It's really not much of a leak but we definitely want to get it repaired before putting her in again for the summer boating season.

Crums
I'm looking at head units now, trying to decide whether or not to have it sirius satalite ready or not. Seeing as how you can get satalite on smart phones, I don't want to waste any money on a feature like that if I can plug in to the ipod jack and play it there.

Have you considered just using a WMA or iPod hooked directly to your amp? I know we don't ever use or play the radio anymore ourselves we just listen to our music we've downloaded to our iPod. With what we've got loaded on it now we can listen to almost four days of continuous music without any repeats. Pretty sure you can hook on up directly to an amp or at least some of them and do away with the head unit.
 

Crums

Wakeboarder Extraordinaire
At one point I had my stereo hooked up directly like you're talking about, but I missed having local weather reports when it starts looking cloudy. Even more important, when the end of summer comes I have to be able to listen to the Buckeye games while enjoying the sun.
 
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