Re: Starcraft 21' Mariner That's no longer for sale
I have a list of about 10 things that I want to do with the Mariner, so far.
A ladder quickly rose to the top when the hang over the side 3 step was a PITA to use.
I started with pulling the ladder off the Hurricane that sits out in the yard. Came up with what I hoped is a good working plan and started putting it together.
Here is a pre install pic of the construction of the deck with the ladder attached.
The ladder is mounted to what used to be a baseball stadium bleacher back rest. The deck is 2 layers of 5/8ths southern yellow pine, old bleacher decking. The deck was coated twice with poly and covered with non slip tread, stick on. The non slip was black and after sitting in the sun it almost blistered my hand. I painted it with white Krylon that was laying around, trimmed it out with some scrap alum angle.
I went to install it and I found an issue with the splashwell. The front starboard corner of the splashwell had seperated and the PO had filled and painted the area. This is what it looked like after the fill was removed.
Looking at the front side, the corner was broken.
I use a small jack that was on top of my kicker tank to lift the splashwell and use a ratchet strap to pull in the sides. Drilled out a bunch of rivets and installed 24 new rivets. Used some backing plates where I could. Ended up with this. Repaired the other side too.
The sliding doors worked much better after the repair. Now I was able to install the ladder on the straight and flat area of the upper splashwell.
Here is the installed view.
I was pretty lucky the only thing I had to buy was 4 stainless fender washers, $3.26. I had all the other parts laying around. I think I might qualify as a hoarder when it comes to hardware and misc. stuff.
I think it's pretty solid, I did climb it a couple times. Only 5 new holes in the boat. We'll see how it works out on the water tomorrow. I think this a good temp solution, maybe even a year or two. but I think it will need to be upgraded a little more to last until my son has the boat. I keep telling him he will get it in about 30 years.
Now you need to fix the tow car, 
