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Thanks Mike,
A big part of my dilemna with boating is to make it comfortable, safe and fun for the kids as well as the misses , so they will want to come along too. But I also must try to keep the costs down to a dull roar.
The kids are 11 and 13, so not too young. Something we could sneak about the bay with will probably be ideal, maybe out to Coochie and Mud and Russell etc.
Any good ideas would be appreciated.
Have you tried hiring a boat for the day? You can get small tinnies up to half-cabs at various places. To avoid the need for a licence they generally only have small outboards, but you could get an idea if the rest of the family will make use of a boat if you get one of your own.
One of my previous boats was a 14 ft tinny with forward steering and a folding canopy. The windscreen and canopy provide some protection from the elements, and if you folded the top forward you had the whole boat to fish from. With a 40hp Merc it got along pretty quickly, but I would rarely use more than 20 litres of fuel in a day. My 'glass 1/2 cab and 70hp Johnno could easily burn 40 litres, though I tended to venture further afield. That amount of fuel is getting a bit expensive today.
The other issue is towing your boat. If you have to trade up to a bigger car, the budget could end up HUGE.
A major improvement was the side pockets. Very few small tinnies have them, but I reckon that they are a great idea. In my little boat, it is impossible to stand at the very outside edges of the floor along the gunwales without risking tipping the boat - especially for a big bloke like me. So the idea is to make use of this otherwise wasted space for extra storage.
Making them was simplicity personified – 12 mm exterior ply, painted as per the floor (but without the sand), held in place with some brackets made from aluminium angle. In the middle, I made a small bracing piece between the ply and a rib.
Along the top edge of the ply I fixed some more aluminium angle, which does a few things – stiffens the ply, protects the exposed edge from weather and making it all look neater and more professional.
The side pocket also provides a couple of flat surfaces thet can be used for other things. A couple of pix might give a better idea than mere words:
Keep the photos coming Tiny tinny getting ready to do the exact same thing on my tinny the more ideas I see the closer I get to exactly what I want.I would like a bigger boat but the price of fuel is a deal breaker now and its not gonna get any cheaper.
Thanks
Mark - I found a broken milk crate and cut the top off it. It fits well on the shalf under the bows and the anchor rope/chain are looped and placed in the crate. The anchor sits on top. I will post a pic later.
some great ideas there mike - good neat job.
i used to have a 12 ft tinny that didn't have enough storage space so i just built a couple of platforms using the same principal used in your floor support structure. just light alloy angle with ply exterior. it made things so much more comfortable being able to store everything out of the way.
steve
I considered raising seating, but I was worried that this might also raise the centre of gravity (I weigh >100 kg). Did you find this was a problem?
geoff / mike,
the raised rear seat mount is a square of say 8mm alloy plate about 300 x 300mm with a 60mm dia hole cut in the centre. through this hole a piece of 60mm alloy tube runs all the way down to the floor, where it is welded on. everything is welded in place. the 8mm plate is welded to the piece of 25mm box you can see across the front of the original thwart seat, as well as stitched to the thwart itself.
the tube running through the old thwart is basically a tube for the seat pedestal to run in. these are a nice snug fit one inside the other. i made up a nylon pad for the bottom of the smaller pedestal tube so its not a alloy on alloy rotation point at the bottom. hope this makes sense.
mike the raised seating does make it a little more unstable, but this was not enough to cause any problems to me. it was predominantly a creek boat, but i did venture up to a few miles offshore from campwin beach (near mackay) in it over the years. those thick padded freely swivelling seats really made the boat. they are so comfortable.
steve
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