Whaler Central - Boston Whaler Boat Information and Photos

Posted by Kindervb on 03/25/13 - 11:21 AM

I want to mount a couple of folding seats to the bench seat on my 15 Sport GLS. The problem that I have is a previous owner put an access hatch in the seat to access the gas tank under the seat, the hatch is mounted in a way that I feel will interfere with mounting the seats. There is a picture of the hatch on my personal page the last image. I ordered a couple of Tempress seats with the quick disconnect bases and they should be here this week.

The access hatch does not need to be this big and I have been looking for some smaller ones online and even thought about going with an 8’ round ones to replace this. The issue I have is how best to fix what is there so I can mount the seats, add a new access hatch and have it look decent. I have done some fiberglass work but nothing like this and the oprtion to take it somewhere to get it fixed is not something I can do.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by tedious on 03/25/13 - 11:42 AM

How about a wood or starboard seat that sits on top of your existing one? You could hinge this so the whole thing would flip backward to fuel up using the existing opening. It would have the additional advantage of a little extra seat height.

Tim

Posted by tedious on 03/27/13 - 5:41 AM

If hinging doesn't seem right, you could just rip out the existing hatch completely and fasten a piece of starboard over the entire thwart. Then mount the seats and the new, smaller hatch on the Starboard.

By the way, I have found eBay to be a very good source for single pieces of Starboard..

Tim

Posted by Kindervb on 03/27/13 - 1:20 PM

The more I have looked at what I have I think covering with Starboard is the way to go, I picked up a new access hatch 8" round and thanks for the tip on Ebay, I picked up a 1/4" piece 24x54 for $45. the seats should be here tomorrow so if the weather is decent next week I can get going on this.

Posted by Kindervb on 04/01/13 - 5:49 PM

Got all the parts in and got the starboard cut to size then used a round over bit in the router to ease all the edges, cut in the new 8" access hatch and then got the seats mounted. I am really happy with how it turned out and how much more comfortable it will to run the boat. Images of the finished job are on my personal page.