Legal requirement for a boat seat

reelfishin

Captain
Joined
Mar 19, 2007
Messages
3,043
I fished out of a 22' Starcraft SS with only three of those folding deck chairs onboard, no other seating. Never once did I feel like they needed to be bolted down. They never moved, in fact, if you wanted to move the seat while underway, you had to get up, and move the seat because the rubber feet gripped the Nautolex floor so well.
Never once did I have an issue with the seat wanting to slide of flip, even under hard acceleration with a 200hp outboard.

The rear legs on those folding deck chairs extend pretty far out the back, its all but impossible to make one flip back.
A severe hard left or right maneuver though may make one tip but it never happened to any of us on that boat.

A buddy has a boat with two back to back Wise seats like those sold here at iboats and he cut up and stapled the tread from two white bicycle tires down each side of the seat bottom for traction. The seats are not bolted down in any way in his boat and they don't move, not a bit, and his boat driving is far less sedate than my own.
Personally, I'd feel far less steady atop one of those snap lock style boat pedestals at speed than on a deck chair at my size, which is 6'3" tall and about 325lbs.

As far as I know, there's no law or specification here requiring any special type of seat, many guys add seating by adding a cooler with a pad on top as an extra seat.
 

ravaneli

Cadet
Joined
Jun 1, 2015
Messages
16
None of my friends have boats. You should have seen their faces when they found out. We don't really... boat. This was a really spontaneous purchase.

My wife is asian and that really helps with the weight :)

I do carry a big cooler with me every time. I have never seen that thing move an inch, regardless of waves. I have that soft vynil floor and it kind of sticks to it. I think I will hold on to buying a 4th seat for now. Doesn't seem necessary. If I do buy it one day, it will be to buy a nicer seat for ME, at the help, something higher with air suspension, and that will free my current pedestal as a pedestal for the 4th seat.

I think I made my mind, thanks all for you comments, this was a good read and I appreciate it.
 
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