New old boat

I'm very happy with my rowboat Flier for fishing trips over water up to two miles out and back, but after that it gets to be a too long day for me. Since I'm on the Connecticut river I've got a 40 mile stretch between dams, most of which I've never fished.

I like simple, low maintenance, and also traditional looking boats, and so have been looking on Craigslist for something light that I can easily tow behind a ten year old Subaru Outback, and I think I just found the perfect boat (for me). It's a 1958 Crestliner Super Seaman 14'. It's in near perfect shape -- just needs the seats replaced ad a little shine to come up as a classic fishing skiff.

I already had an '86 8hp Mariner 2-stroke, that I bought new 35 years ago, and had probably put 50 hours on total. It's just been stored mostly. Seems like an economical lightweight combo that I can fish for crappies from here on the CT river, and tow and launch with ease. I'm looking forward to prettying up the boat.

I did take her out the other day for a test spin on a local pond after doing a quick clean of the carb, rebuilding the water pump, and changing the lower unit oil. Went well for the first ten minutes on a local pond, but the carb idle circuit clogged up. Making lemonade from lemons, I just fished where she'd stopped, and caught two crappies, 9" and 10", half a dozen nuisance dink bass, and one 14" bass that was all mouth and gut. Looked like it should have been a 17" but decided to stay small.

I played with the choke partially out and was able to make it back to the launch site. I've since done a thorough cleaning of the carb, and polishing the float valve seat, which I think will clear up the teething problems.

Looking forward to gettin out after some crappies in my new tin bucket -- maybe even tomorrow!


Attachment 407823

Attachment 407824

What a great find, that looks like the perfect size boat and as you say, looks to be in great shape. Congrats!

A great little boat

Great size boat. All you need to get on some slabs.

Good looking boat. Looks like it would fish very well

Beautiful find. Glad to see you were able to get the motor going again. Hope you have many enjoyable seasons with it.

Wow, beautiful little rig!

If it's of interest, I'll post my progress with this boat. Here's a pic of what it looked like when I first got it. Seats had old carpeting on them, and the middle thwart had slipped below its attachment cleat on the starboard side, and trapped the aluminum flotation tank against the floor.

Attachment 407962

Stripping carpet:

Attachment 407963

The slipped and trapped seat and flotation chamber:

Attachment 407964

The only way I could get that seat out was to saw it off at both ends. It was in poor shape anyway, and I plan to replace all the thwarts anyway.

Attachment 407965

After getting the seat out I gave the inside hull a good vacuuming and scrubbing with Mr. Clean. With the seat and tank out of the way I was able toscrub the whole bottom.

I'll paint the bottom to the original paint line, as soon as I can find 24 hours predicted not to rain, not an easy task these days!

Attachment 407966

She’s cleaning up nice, good job. :ThumbsUp

The original bottom paint was a green zinc chromate with non-skid compound embedded. Nowadays you can't get zinc chromate easily (it's highly toxic, and most paints available as such aren't really zinc chromate -- merely zinc chromate-like color). Since I'll be dry-sailing this boat in fresh water, the remaining zinc chromate covered with a good oil based enamel should be fine, re. corrosion.

For non-skid paint, I just happen to have a vintage can of actual non-skid compound (probably a clean graded sand!) from 1957, according to the label. It was given to me by my father in law about ten years ago, and I never had occasion to use it. Well, now here's the perfect excuse!

Attachment 407967

:popcorn

Thanks Buckeye, and Special K :cheers2.

Well, I'm between rainstorms today with about 8 hours in the clear, so I dried the boat first with towels and then with a heat gun on all seams. I masked it, and then mixed up a quart of paint with 4 ounces of the non-skid compound. It looks like very fine white quartz sand, mixed with a light oil of some kind, maybe mineral oil or mineral spirits. It worked well, but had to be constantly stirred while applying.

This is a round-bilged boat, not a vee-bottom or flat-bottom, like modern boats. One nice shapely quality i appreciate is the tumble-home in the quarters -- the way the sides roll back in at the stern -- very Fifties style.

Every frame in the boat (or I should properly say every floor member) is different and each seems to be stamped with a part number. All of the floors have limber holes at the center of the boat, so water won't sit behind them, but drains to the back if the trailer is set bow-high.

Most of the floors are stampings, but two are heavy duty I-beam extrusions, bent to shape. I'm really impressed with the quality of this 63 year old boat. It might as well be two years old from the way it has held up.

Attachment 408026

I got the painting done in an hour, now fingers crossed the rain holds off long enough for the paint to set. It's drying slowly in this humidity, but I'm pretty sure rain won't hurt it in a few hours.

Attachment 408027

lookin' good, keep us posted!

That is coming along nicely. I look forward to seeing your progress

Nice work. I am impressed!

Alan

Man that’s awesome AND beautiful, keep up the good work!

Man that is really coming along nicely! Thanks for sharing your progress.

Thank you guys!
Shadow, Lake Charles you guys just had some really hard times. It hit really bad down towards Houma. I actually worked for an outfit down there that designed flood control structures when I lived across Ponchartrain twenty five years ago. I had family down in N.O. Brought my great aunt Oris (92) up here to stay with us in Vermont after Katrina, then went back down with her and worked on her house to repair damage. She lived in Jefferson. She's gone now.

In less important news here, I had the boat out today on the CT river. Motor worked flawlwss all day. I loaded up quite a bit of gear, toolboxes, trolling motor and 2 batts in case I got stuck out, oars, double paddle, couple anchors, fishing gear depth sounder (shot thru the hull, didn't have a mount yet.

She ran bow high at first so I dropped the motor mount pin a notch and shifted some of the gear forward. Ran much better then, more level and faster. Doing two runs in opposite directions to average out current and wind, I am running 15.5 mph according to GPS, which isn't bad for a 30 year old 8hp motor on a 63 year old boat.

I checked out a lot of different potentil new fishing spots, anchoring at least a dozen on both shores without too much luck over about a 4 mile stretch of river. I only fished 1/32 oz jig heads with soft plastic shad baits, and I did get a late (11:00) start, so not too surprising for a first try. Caught only 1 crappie, but a nice 11 incher. Some small bass both LG and smallie, and about half a dozen perch.

Called it quits at about 3:00, and hauled all the way back to the launch ramp against wind (gusting to probably 15) and current. About a 20 minute run at full throttle. 20 feet from the launch dock, I throttled down from maybe 5mph (no wake zone) and the motor quit. I tried to restart but no go. Couple tries with both choke out and in, bulb was firm, and then I just had to get forward and grab the dock corner and do the walk of shame around that corner to get right with the ramp. Luckily nobody was there or waiting to launch, since it was a weekday!

After towing home I immediately put motor barrel under the Mariner, filled it, and tried to start. No go. Pulled a plug, looked good, tan insulator, but no gas smell to the plug even though I had choked it and pulled half a dozen times. So clearly no gas getting to the engine. Since the fuel bulb was firm, I'm going to guess it's a stuck float valve, or a blockage in the fuel feed inside the engine cover, Could be the filter I guess. Can't be the fuel pump is bad because the fuel bulb being firm would bypass that problem. Ad I don't think the carb jets are blocked unless every one of the circuits were blocked, since I choked it, and SOME fuel would have got through. So tomorrow I'll pull the carb. If the carb fuel bowl is empty, that will mean the float valve needs attention. If it's full then somehow all jets are clogged. Anyway, we'll see what's up tomorrow.......

And I polished that float valve seat, too......! Well maybe not enough. Who knows..........

How old are the full lines? Might want to think about changing all the rubber stuff out between the tank and the carb.

Thanks 6PT, I will check again if I find anything in filter or carb bowl that looks like rubber.

But I made the present fuel line up myself last year using genuine automotive ethanol-proof braided rubber line and a new squeeze bulb and fittings. Before starting the 8hp engine first time a couple weeks ago, I emptied the tank, and blew it out with compressed air and inspected. It was spotless and also only a year old. Gas and oil were new, and it was genuine Quicksilver oil. I also changed out the whole water pump, and drained and filled the gear oil before first starting.

I hope I will get a chance to take the carb off today before it rains again. And then we'll see what it has to say.

Got the carb off. There was fuel in the bowl. And some dirt particles. Which says to me it wasn't the float valve sticking, but the jets all clogged.

After checking carefully I think the dirt particles were probably coming from the fuel pump gaskets.

I do have have replacement diaphragms, so I'll rebuild the pump, and one of the two gaskets I need to replace, but I lack the second fuel pump gasket. So I sent for it.

The fuel filter is inline before the fuel pump, so it can't filter out anything that occurs inside the fuel pump, and I think that the gaskets there were the probable problem, based on the color of the particles in the fuel bowl. The gaskets were hard to peel off -- they just shredded like they were glued down, and I had to scrape the remainder off. It was a fiber reddish color under a black rubber coating -- and that matched the particle colors in the fuel bowl.

So we're dead in the water for about a week until that missing gasket arrives. I'm also going to replace the carb float bowl O ring with a new one, to make sure we've got all new gaskets, O-rings and diaphragms in the carb, after the fuel filter.

I'm also going to replace the fuel filter itself and the engine internal fuel line (though they both look good). But then I'll know that everything that could shed any particles, from the filter on in to the carb is brand new.

Of course I'll have to clean all jets again.