Re: Boat cleats, or lack there of!!
My boat came with 2 forward and 2 aft cleats. Not nearly enough for me. I bought 2 more pair of the same Perko oem cleats and installed them evenly spaced between the originals. Each has 4 mounting bolts. I made backer plates and thru bolted them all. The drilling took 10 minutes and mounting another 10. It took probably another 15 minutes for each one to remove a small area of foam under the deck where they were mounted. Now I have 8 cleats all matched and they look pretty sharp.
Now when anchored we have lots of extra places to tie up tubes, minnow buckets, etc. We often tie up at restaurant docks, or the town dock for concerts, etc. That gives me a place to hang 4 fenders for near full coverage. The single purpose fender cleats are crappy, IMHO! Naturally we use the cleats for transient dockage as well. For short term attended use like that a solid 4 screw mount is probably sufficient. I overdesigned them just because. For overnight usage, actually I would probably use the bow and stern eyes. More secure, won't interfere with the cover (now you don't need cutouts for the lines), so you'll take less water in the boat when it rains. Most of our local marinas have a drive up cross line with a center hook in each slip. The hook goes on the bow eye.
My son's newer boat came with 4 popups. I guess you could say the flat shiny chrome covers are attractive, but they suck to me. Not easy to use, they wiggle when trying to fasten the end loop on a line, and the opening is a bit smaller than my stationary models. If I bought a new boat and they came as std equipment I'd be looking for a way to replace them. Functionality wins out over appearance. But that's just my opinion.
I can't believe a fancy mastercraft didn't come with cleats....maybe they were an option!
