Re: 20' Sea Ray Hull - Free - In NJ
I listed it on craigslist, in both the free and boat sections.
Good idea!
It's got a few responses, but nothing serious yet. Most didn't seam to read far enough into the add or understand that it's just a hull. One guy wanted to know if I would garrantee it to run and last the summer. I made it pretty clear that it was a bare hull, just the lower half to build on in the ads. I have had to repspond to many that it's a free hull that's in good shape, nothing more, nothing less, no trailer, no motor, no drive, no batteries, no tank. Just a bare hull.
It consists of the lower hull, below the rub rail, the upper is still there, but if I were building on this, I would most likely cut most of that away and start over, especially up front. It has a partial floor, down both sides, but it's not the main floor, its the area that they filled with floatation.
If it was me doing this, I would flat deck this boat building in several storage compartments and maybe an in floor live well. I would cut away the upper bow plate and continue the inner ledge area all the way around, build a center console and add four pedestal seats, two at the console, two as fishing chairs. This set up would have oodles of space, it's a wide boat with lots of room. I would put two fuel tanks in the floor on each side, two 50 gal. tanks would be fine but there's room for much larger tanks.
The bottom line is that it's a really nice lower hull to start with, if I had the time or room, it would be on my list of projects, but I don't and I have enough projects started now to last the next 10 years.
If I had a place to put it out in full view, I would, I am too far off the main road here and they frown on corner sales like that. If there's no takers, it will either have to go to the county dump or get cut up. It's not the fee that I am concerned with, I just hate to scrap a perfectly good hull. It wouldn't be as bad if it were all beat or damaged, but this hull is in such nice shape.
To give some idea of this hull, it's sitting on a common V bunk trailer now, with the bottom being about 12" off the ground, the top of the rear rail is at least 6' high on the trailer. When standing inside, on the sub floor that remains, the sides are just above waist high to me, and I'm 6'4" tall. There's enough open floor space for me to lay crossways and then some on the floor, I was able to crawl up into the forward compartment to remove the tank and windlass and had room to move around. There is probably room to put two long 80 gallon tanks on each side beneath the floor in this hull. Thus allowing for a flat deck floor with either a pilot house or center console.
The transom is solid, and one of the thickest I have seen in a boat like this in a long time. It looks like two layers of 1" thick plywood, sandwiched in glass on both sides. It is visable where the gimble mount was. I would simply fill the hole, reinforce it with a full sheet of wood and resin, then add the outboard mounts. There is plenty of strong healthy structure to tie into on the inside as well. Of course, you could always go back with a stern drive, but I think the room and power gain with twin outboards would far justify the work.
