1990 16 foot Springbok Starfish build

Hi, new member here. My name is Kevin and I just purchased a 16 foot 1990 Alcan Springbok Starfish, as well as a early 90s yamaha 30 2stroke to mount on her, both of which were about 300km in different directions from my home. This is my second boat, my first being a 1960s 14foot tinny which was loaned to me by my girlfriends father, it had been in the family it's whole life. It was very neat to be a part of the history of that boat.

My first boat
had a 15hp 1990 yamaha 2 stroke on her, semi permanent night light wiring, and 30lb transom mount trolling motor. removable seats.


My current boat, that is truely mine


My motor


The boat is in very good shape, all be it a bit messy with pine needles and in need of a repaint. It seems to have been taken care of its whole life. The trailer is in decent shape for a 23 year old trailer, but will need a little TLC.

The plans are as follows;
for trailer
-New carpeted bunks
-New rollers
-New tire (small crack)
-Inspect and repack wheel bearings, replace if necessary
-Complete rewire (wires are very dryed out and brittle)
-Repaint
-New winch

For boat
- Front casting deck with storage underneath and removable pedestal seat (wise 13" pedestal with quick release on top and quick release on bottom.
- Flat floor in between bench seats
- Wire navigation lights and possible led floor lights
- Wire fish finder
- Add motorguide bow mount trolling motor 45lbs thrust
- clean up paint on interior of boat
- Repaint exterior with new decals ( Black , or Blue again? still undecided)
- Mount motor

That's the main plan as it stands, should be able to start working on her in the next couple weeks. Still pretty cold out here. I'm planning on doing my floor/casting deck a little bit different, I will be doing a deck style removable floor made out of cedar 1x6, with about 1/4- 1/2" gaps in between. It should be light , strong, and pretty rott resistant. we'll see how it turns out. Please feel free to leave your questions, comments, and any other ideas you might have.
I really appreciate the input.

Kevin

I like the way springboks look. I will be following.

Your new boat just looks fast, I like the way the front looks.

Between the snow and the Springbok,going to say your from Canada.
The a real nice boat to start with and that motor looks to be a 3 cyl. 30hp?
If it is that's a real sought after motor,one of the stronger ones in it's class,should push you along nicely.

I like what your thinking for the mods.That cedar planking was used by atleast one other member here,looked real nice when finished(might not of even been cedar,planking though).I like that pale baby blue boat color,you can identify the boat type just by sight,,,I used to use a 14' Springbok

Hellya! sweet boat, welcome to the forums. I love the design of that boat.

bigwave said:

Your new boat just looks fast, I like the way the front looks.

Click to expand...

man that does look fast....slick

Alright so I thought it was time to bring this thread back from the dead. I finished up my build In early June and fished out of it all summer. The boat did amazing, will push 31mph with only myself in the boat, and 25-28 fully loaded. Anyways I figured it was time to show off my handy work, and express some things I'd like to add in the future.
Here's a little teaser

I will post the full build later today, writing it up now
Stay tuned.

Kevin

So after much ado. I'm finally sitting here writing a build thread.
I could have easily just fixed up the trailer a bit, thrown my motor on the boat and been able to fish with no issues. But I'm not the sort of person to do that. I don't drive around in beater cars, I don't like to drive around in anything that looks beat. I take pride in my things, and love a good project.

The first order of business was the trailer, It was In a pretty sad state when I got it. It was actually even worse than I thought once I dug into it. I knew when I bought the boat and trailer, that the winch, one wheel/tire, and the bunk carpet would need to be replaced. But upon further inspection, most of the rollers were bad, the tail lights were in a pretty sad state, and all the wiring was shot. So it got a full once over. I repainted the trailer, rewired it, installed new wheel bearings and a new wheel/tire, all new rollers and bunks, even ended up having to buy two roller brackets due to one being bent, and another being missing in action. The one that was missing was there fore the tilt function on the trailer, which at some point had been disabled. It really comes in handy for shallow water launches, I've had many times where people can't even believe I'm going to be able to launch.

BEFORE



I don't really have a proper after picture, as I was kind of under a self set deadline to get my boat in the shop I was going to paint it in but I think this photo will suffice.


The photo above is after I had sanded the boat down ready for primer. I really wanted to keep the base paint, but I just could not get the decals off without some serious sanding.

I was in a rush to get the boat back on the trailer due to only having 3 days to prime, paint, and get it out of the shop I would be working in. Talk about no wiggle room. But I got it done. here are some pictures along the way;



Wearing her first coat of primer, I used Canadian tire's Aquagard marine Primer. It laid down very flat for a brush, coverage was quite good as well.


Interior of boat was painted with a high gloss enamel. It is a fairly inexpensive product made by Armor coat. I used the same product for the exterior of the boat, it is only 10$ a liter vs 30 for the marine paint. It is also very easy to touch up.



Exterior painted and drying. I'm pretty happy with the end result, there is a consistent brush texture to it, but it is hardly noticeable and the tape lines came out great.


Here she is in the light, minus the soon to be installed decals.

So that's part one, next, on to Part two, the floor and electrical components.

Your boat is looking great, the hull has nice lines!

Now for part two - Interior flooring and electrical.

So as some of you may have read in the beginning of my thread, I planned to use Cedar planking for my interior. And that is just what I did!
It has a far better strength to weight ratio than plywood, is very rot resistant, and requires no top coat. It will absorb water, but will dry out quickly enough that it is not a concern. I used the boat many rainy days this summer, and can attest it performed awesome.

So onto the build, I selected 1"x6" (3/4x5 1/2" overall) cedar fence boards for the floor boards, and cedar 2"x3" For certain structure and ripped down 1"x6" for other structure. When I looked into wood , I was originally planning on using much heavier pressure treated pine, but came to find out that it will react with raw aluminum and eat holes in your boat. I didn't want this, so I opted for the Cedar. I opted for 1x6 fence boards over 5/4" x6 pre-sanded deck boards for a few reasons; for one they were cheaper, two they were easier to work with when curves needed to be cut, and three they were lighter, at 3/4" thick instead of 1" thick. They are more than strong enough with my beams being placed about 18" on center.



Test fitting some interior boards. I fastened the boards to the seats with standard PT wood deck screws. they screwed in just fine into the thin aluminum of the seats.



Casting deck Framed up. This was one of the big reasons I was doing the interior of this boat, I really wanted to make use of the 16foot boat, stock the front is pretty much useless for fishing. It is only really a spot to throw an anchor or battery.


Casting deck more or less finished, the opening is for where my battery and main fuses go, as well as whatever else I want to throw in there. there's quite a bit of storage space there.


Floor complete, seat decking almost done. If you look closely you'll notice That I left a few feet unplanked at the back of the boat. It is only planked up until the edge of my driver seat, so my feet can always rest on a flat floor, but after that it is just painted aluminum. I did this for a couple reasons; for one, I figured that I would probably spill gas/oil a few times back there and stain the wood. The second reason was to be able to tell how much water was in the boat after rain storms, I could easily tell right away if I would need to drain the boat or not. With a full floor, you simply can't do this easily.
Somewhere along the lines, I also decided that decking the seats would be a good idea as well. For one, they would match the floor and casting deck. Two, no more hot metal in the sun



Complete, ready to install the rest of the gadgets.

This is where I kind of slacked off in the picture department. I didn't really take any pictures of the wiring. But basically, I installed a piece of PVC electrical conduit , ran 8ga wire from the battery up front to the back of the boat. I also ran 16ga wire for the lighting circuit. The main circuit is on a 50A glass fuse. At the back of the boat I have an on off switch for the exterior lighting circuit, and another for the future deck lights. I wired in my transom mounted trolling motor , and the boat was ready for its first fish.


First time in the water after she was rebuilt. Performed flawlessly.

And she catches fish too.

After a couple times out I decided it was time to upgrade my trolling motor, the little 30lbs thrust transom mount just wasn't cutting it for the river I was fishing in. It could just barely even hold me in place. So on went a Minn kota powerdrive V2 50lbs thrust . I got it as a refurbish from Cabelas, it was about 150$ less than a non refurb and the way I see it is these refurbished units have been quality controlled a second time so should actually be better.

To install, I installed a second 50A fuse, and quick disconnect wiring at the front of the boat. I also made an aluminum bow cap extension to give the motor a firm place to mount. The 50lbs thrust pulls this boat amazingly and doesn't draw too much current. I can fish for about 50hours in low wind and still have battery left.


There she is on her first trip with the new trolling motor


And up camping for the week.

I'm very happy with my second boat, but as always there is room for improvement.
For next season there are a few things I would like to add/modify;
-Led light strips illuminating the floor at night
-Latch under drivers seat to keep it from leaning back too far.
-Live well of some sort (portable, or possibly removable in center seat)

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my thread, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.
And if you are interested in seeing more, there are more pictures in my album.

Kevin

Very nice build and I see you're putting fish in the boat. =D>
Thanks for sharing.

I really like the look of the cedar planking, very nice! Did you happen to compare weight vs marine ply + carpet? Im getting ready to deck before spring, and I wouldnt mind doing my floor decking in cedar, which would match my new cedar transom. Did or do you have any plans for dry storage under your fishing deck in the bow?

BloodStone said:

A belated :WELCOME:
It's great to see another procrastinator on here (besides me). :lol:
I too, finished up my 15' Meyers mod last April but, have yet to post any pics or anything else.
Too busy fusing over carb & performance issues.
Plus subconsciously, I guess I was wanting to re-do the OB cowl (have the new Johnson emblems) before I posted but...
Nice job btw. =D> I did my 12' aluminum flat bottom FeatherCraft boat kind of like what you did with yours.
Only difference is (besides no seat posts), the slats in my boards are painted & farther apart.
Which just means, my fishing buddy curses more whenever he goes to live bait fish with a shiner/minnow & it slips out of his hands & ends up under the floor boards.
I've told him I don't my the usual colorful metaphors of ****!! F***s!! Hel*s!! & D*mns!!, but, to please lay off using the Lord's name in vain (because we are after-all in a METAL boat 8-[ ).

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Haha yeah I just got caught up fishing in it all the time that I never got the chance to do a write up lol. And as for losing things under the floor, as I found out fish can get through almost half their thickness, so I've almost lost small perch and sunfish underneath the boards... Hence, part of the reason I ended up making the two center boards hinge up.

panFried said:

I really like the look of the cedar planking, very nice! Did you happen to compare weight vs marine ply + carpet? Im getting ready to deck before spring, and I wouldnt mind doing my floor decking in cedar, which would match my new cedar transom. Did or do you have any plans for dry storage under your fishing deck in the bow?

Click to expand...

I compared the weights when I was looking into what way to do the build. There's a couple things that come into consideration, plywood must either be painted, marine varnished, or fiberglassed before carpet/vinyl. Cedar needs no treatment at all. Red cedar is approximately 23lb/cubic foot , standard plywood is approximatly 34lbs/cubic foot. Marine plywood ranges from 28lbs/cubic foot to 44lbs/cubic foot. So all of the above are already almost 50% heavier than cedar, without the addition of any covering. Another thing to take into consideration is that I leave approximately 3/8" gap in between each piece of cedar plank, so to cover a 48"x96" area I'm actually only using 45.375" x96" . this may not seem like a lot but over the entire square footage of the boat the weight savings adds up.

The other thing to take into consideration is cost + labour. There is no doubt to me, that decking the way I did is more carpentry intensive than just cutting and fitting some plywood. However, with plywood you haveto cut, seal (either varnish or fiberglass) than cut and glue your covering. The cost of the cedar planking was 6.66$ for a 1" x6" x 8' (3/4"x5.5"x8' overall) so for 48"x96" area the cost would be approximately 50$ , no sealant or anything else needed.
Standard construction grade plywood in my area would cost anywhere from 25 - 50$ for a 48x96 sheet, marine plywood being closer to 80$ a sheet. Add in sealant of some sort(min 30$ for marine varnish) , Glue (min 50$) , and the vinyl flooring (15$/linear foot, 6 foot wide, 20 foot min order), and I'm well over the price of the more resiliant cedar.

The costs for the floor would be as follows
3 sheets of plywood = 75- 240$
glue = min 50$
sealant = min 30$
Vinyl flooring = 300$ carpet = 150$ (9$/foot (3foot min order))

So for a plywood floor with covering I would be anywhere from 300 at the cheapest up to and beyond 620 to do it the right way.

The cost for cedar was significantly less, with very little waste.
I ended up somewhere in the neighborhood of 150$ for the entire floor and seats.

Framing was another 50 -80$

I'm very happy with the cedar floor. I was afraid it would be slippery and wick water, but it works amazingly well. It absorbs a bit of water when it rains, but it drys out VERY quickly, and is not slippery at all.

Hope I've inspired some others to try this method.
Kevin

[url=https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=340729#p340729 said:

panFried » Today, 10:21[/url]"]I really like the look of the cedar planking, very nice! Did you happen to compare weight vs marine ply + carpet? Im getting ready to deck before spring, and I wouldnt mind doing my floor decking in cedar, which would match my new cedar transom. Did or do you have any plans for dry storage under your fishing deck in the bow?

Click to expand...

As for your other question about dry storage, the hatch in the bow is for semi dry storage + my battery. I'm planning on maybe making another hatch underneath the bow cap now that I extended it. If I do, that will be a watertight box for valuables, phones, wallets, etc..

Those Cedar planks look really nice, good idea man.

Awesome idea with the cedar!

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I'm very happy so far with the performance of the boat .

Kevin

I'm getting ready to start a new build on my boat and the only thing I haven't purchased is the plywood. I had considered cedar (I have a cedar walkway on my trailer) but wasn't sure how it would look. After seeing yours I might have to rethink my plab to use plywood.

Looks great! I never even thought about using cedar. You definitely did your homework and research.