Turning the ugliest boat in Costa Rica into a respectable 28' Center Console Diesel

[GringoJohn]

Well, here's the side view with the motor box installed.



Looks like the box will make a great seat to fight fish from and there is still plenty of room behind it for fishing.



We still haven't put the last section of floor in, I have to do some welding for the rudder and piston back there, but when that is installed there should be some good fishing space. The box is the perfect height to sit on, and I can sit of the box and still see over the console.

And then the box had a little give in the top, so I went ahead and put some reinforcements on the inside, and we cabosiled all the inside corners and glassed them as well. Should make the top rigid, and keep it from breaking when I have 4 fat guys sitting on top



And then we moved on to the borders, which really haven't had me too excited to do. Center Consoles, benches and motor boxes are just more fun for some reason. So, i don't know why the fiberglass does that, but the border was really distorted after we took it out of the mold. I don't know if you can see too well from the pictures, but check out the edge:



So what we did is get some 1X2's and just screw them to the edge to make it straighter.





We are going to do it like it was wood, but with corecell. Going to build a frame out of corecell pieces, and i'm thinking in the back we are going to make the border 5.5 inches wide with a 2.5 inch inside piece. I wanted a bit wider, but the motor box is kind of wide, even after we narrowed it, so I'm worried about having plenty of space to walk by. I spent the last 4 hours today cutting out parts to make the frame for the side borders (are those called gunnels?). I don't know that this is the best picture, but here's what i finished up with:



That picture doesn't make too much sense, but after i trim the excess glass off and put a few on the boat tomorrow, I'll post a picture and that'll probably show what we are trying to do better than explaining it! Just got in and it's 10pm (we started at 6am), so please forgive any typo's, i'm going to bed!