Easy to clean fishing,swimming pontoon

[jntrup]

This boat will replace a 26 foot Bayliner deck boat that we have had since 1995. We had stripped the carpeting and many other pieces to make the boat easier to clean sand and mud off the deck.

It will sit on the Mississippi river 7 months a year in the sun with little or no cleaning except hosing sand and dirt off the deck. We use it for fishing, hunting, skiing, beaches, and swimming.

We basically want a tritoon with a driving console, rails around the outside, no carpet, and we will probably put around 200hp outboard on it.

While many pontoon/tritoon manufacturers make great looking boats, we don't want to buy a high end boat, only to strip many pieces off to fit our needs. I feel like that would be a waste of money.

I have looked at a few custom pontoon builders and some that ship the parts for assembly. Both looked interesting as we are pretty handy outside of no welding. I don't think we could buy the parts alone and assemble "freehand", but if we had an instruction sheet, with the parts, that would be no problem.

Anyone have any ideas for this use case?

 

[ahicks]

Sounds like a nice project. For starters, I'd look into a vinyl floor covering for whatever you do.

From there, is there a reason you're going new? For the kind of work you're talking about, a refurb of an older boat with solid bones and shot floor/upholstery may yield a far less expensive project. Not that hard if you're handy at all.

 

[clemsonfor]

I am thinking just as Ahicks. Why pay the huge new price. Find you a decent good platform used to work from and strip everything off and go back with new marine ply for floor and your seats. If you want a new outboard buy one. I would go with a console made of that molded plastic and mount that. You may as well get a boat that's been abused and seats are shot and need to be pulled out unless you want a few years before there shot. Because leaving it out in the sun and rain 7 months a year is abuse on the boat and nothing will hold up. So may as well buy one where seats are trashed already and pull those out and install your fishing seats or camping chairs that are easily replaceable and don't cost a fortune.

Rebuilding one just takes a bit of time and effort, will be much cheaper than a new one , even low end