Tin addiction 18' Starcraft Chieftain

[BWR1953]

You guys with the Chief's may be interested in this, I bought a head for the wife and it was one of the best purchases for her comfort. Nobody likes to look at a porta potty so I used a small amount of cabin space and a bit of material to come up with this.

I did a similar installation for an old Glasspar that I had back in the 90s. My girls appreciated it for sure!

 

[hayko1971]

Nice and tidy solution! You'd never know it was there.

 

[MARUSS]

I just finished reading your restore project. Super sweeeeet. I'm going to use a lot of your ideas on my 75 chief.
Great read.
Thanks.

 

[Watermann]

I appreciate your kind words and thanks for stopping by Maruss. Be sure to start your thread here so we can all follow along.

 

[Watermann]

This month I've really stretched the legs on the Chief and after spending so much time on the water I found that I needed more places to stash small stuff I don't want in my pockets or hands. So like in a car a side door pocket came to mind so I looked but couldn't find anything that I liked or could use. Then I found the mesh bungee map pockets and mounted them on the side panel down by the floor. (URL embedded in the pic) Yeah kinda spendy for what they are but...




So my longest run before last weekend was on the river, 70 - 80 miles round trip. Yesterday I went to the "big lake". There's 30 miles of water beyond any road and bordered by the Sawtooth wilderness area. 110 miles round trip of every water condition from 3 foot wind driven white caps to mill pond glass. Not even one little hiccup and returned with 3/8" of a tank of fuel to spare after being on the water for almost 9 hours. The admiral at times got scared in the rough water and started quizzing me about the rivets in the boat and if my bilge pump worked. On the trailer I pulled the plug on the Chief's bilge to see not a drop come out. Seems the small leak I had decided to seal up somehow.

Some pics of the lake...

The lake ends with some great scenery.

 

[BWR1953]

Congrats on the long dry ride! And I'm planning on using similar pockets on my little Kingfisher too. Should come in handy.

 

[Tnstratofam]

Nice find on the map pocket. I wouldn't have thought about them for storage. Glad to hear the long lake run went smooth, and that the leak seems to have dissapeared. Your right about the views at the lake. Spectacular!

 

[Watermann]

The houses and cabins on the up lake end are boat in or floatplane only access. The water surface temp hardly reaches 50 degrees in the heat of summer so swimming is more like a polar bear challenge. :lol:

This was the first trip out where I actually got spray on my windshield and found out what the ole Chief was made of. They're fit for some mighty rough water, even the little ones like mine.

Looking over my shoulder it was kind of sad to be departing the towering mountains and solitude. When I got back to civilization the water was covered with jerk skis, half sunk board boats and 100's of boats on the water.

 

[GA_Boater]

Nice day trip, Rob! :thumb: No drips at the end of the day. Fantastic!

But wasn't it a little late for the bride to be worried about rivets and bilge pumps. :lol:

 

[dozerII]

Very cool Rob, we don't really have anything like that available to us here for boating. The map pockets are a nice touch. Darcy"s 18 SS was taking on a little bit of water at the start of the season as well and has since quit. I wonder if the seam seal material they use swells when it gets wet and then seals up.:noidea:

 

[classiccat]

Amazing Journey! It's nice to see you finally unlace the gloves with that bad boy! Now you're ready for "The Bar" :madgrin:

 

[Watermann]

I've been there a few times, took some pics of the ship wrecks on the beach and watched the CG train out there. It's crazy how rough that bar can get, don't think I'll be able to get the admiral out there right yet. :lol:

 

[Decker83]

Those or some awesome pics.. You are lucky to have such a great place to boat on..
I could take the Admiral out and just stay for days or maybe never come back..

 

[Watermann]

Those or some awesome pics.. You are lucky to have such a great place to boat on..
I could take the Admiral out and just stay for days or maybe never come back..

Yeah there were some nice places to shut down along the way and steal some admiral sugar. :heh:

 

[Decker83]

Stealing the Admirals Sugar.. OH YEAH..:whoo:
What a great looking pic ^^^^ Just beautiful..

 

[subliminaltrips]

beautiful boat, nice work!!

 

[GoldDuster360]

Yeah there were some nice places to shut down along the way and steal some admiral sugar. :heh:

Wow, what a pretty place to use a StarCraft.

 

[java230]

Hope your safely away from the fires over there.

 

[Watermann]

Thanks Gabe, yeah we have wildfires all around up here north of Chelan. I can see the smoke plumes over the mountain tops and the evacuations keep getting closer. I heard today our whole 5,000 square mile county is on level 1 evacuation and red flag warnings are up for some severe winds and temps in the high 90's. Figure I will start loading my boats with everything of value and hook them up to my vehicles if things start getting any worse. Getting tired of all the ash fallout and smoke filled skies this summer.

We were out on Rufus Woods Lake yesterday and this was our view coming back into the launch looking southwest. The plume of smoke must of been 15,000 feet. We also decided to turn back about 25 miles up due to the fires to the east throwing lots of smoke.

 

[java230]

Yeah not good over there at all. Stay safe