"New" 20 with a bracket

[zach]

Well, after almost exactly one year, the little boat has been completed. This site has been a tremendous help for many of the decisions that had to be made. First off, I did none of the work, and all praise for the quality of work should be directed to Wildfire Marine in Stuart. The hull is a 1972 and I’ve owned it for about 3 years. After a trip to the keys in May of 07 and seeing a plethora of new spider cracks all over the deck and casting platform, I decided it was time to get the boat rebuilt. The deck/transom/cap was rotten (typical old Seacraft) and it was in need of a repower so I decided to take the plunge. I’m a huge fan of the 20 Seacraft and think its about the perfect hull for the south florida area, so instead of buying a new one, I figured I’d have my old one fit to my tastes.

We raised the deck and enclosed the transom. We installed a floatation bracket from Armstrong and added 12x12 lencos. We added a livewell in front of the console and one in the transom. We also reinforced the forward livewell in order to have it double as tank storage. The old 40 gallon fuel tank was replaced with a new 70 gallon (pushed as far forward as possible), mainly for those summer runs to the islands. Dual batteries and oil tank were placed under the console to counteract the bracket.

Rotten Balsa



Raising the stringers



Enclosing Transom





New deck (and transom livewell). The new deck was cured upside down with weights on top to make it curved, thus forcing water to filter to the sides.



Transom is filled in and hatches are built.





Console takes shape. The previous owner "restored" the boat before I bought it (obviously he did a horrible job) but the one nice part was he put in a new console. The console was from the factory and is the console they used on the 20's from 2000-present. I'm not 100% sure it is the same console used on today’s Seacraft 20, but its from the early 2000 era. To add the livewell and retain the lines of the console, Mike cut out the front and extended it.







Bracket and engine installed



Water line with nothing in the boat, marked by the bottom of the blue tape.



If you look closely, you can see the ball scupper above the water.



Dive rack in front of console. Also, forward console access to all wiring.



Final product

[zach]

Also, while I'm hesitant to post "official" numbers, I will say that I saw 52 mph while only spinning 5350. That was with a Mirage Plus 21p. The motor should spin 6000. We will be raising it a hole or two and experimenting with different props. I'll let you know final numbers when we get them.

[CaptLloyd]

Beautiful boat Zach!!

Congrats and Enjoy!!!

Oh, and hold on to your hat!

Lloyd

[Fr. Frank]

Absolutely beautiful!

[Old'sCool]

Very nice!!

[Billybob]

Thats beautiful Zach.
You're gonna have a lot of fun with that.
I gotta get me a 20'

[Mark]

Pretty boat, -Mike does good work.

[strick]

Zach the boat looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

strick

[pair of jacks]

Zac boat looks great- if you don't mind, without the repower what did Wildfire get for all that work?

[ripndip]

Zach,

That is one beautiful boat. Extremely well thought out. I am in the marine industry and pride myself on properly done, well thought out, appearance happy work, and your boat is perfect. Too often I see an otherwise beautiful boat where someone does something that makes you ask- what were they thinking when they did this? I did notice from the pics that you might be running some tab with them all the way up. I could see the constraint the bracket caused when mounting the tabs. I actually inadvertently did the same thing on my 1990 20' with 12x12 Bennetts, but a little more so than you. I never had any negative results from it. I wish I would have seen or been aware of this website when I redid mine in '99. I would have definitely copied several things you have done here- closed transom, bracket, raised floor. My old boat held 84 gallons (marine patrol must have put the tank in) and made at least a dozen solo island trips/never took fuel/200 Yamaha HPDI. I had weight/scupper/deck drain issues, but the ride and performance (3+ mpg) made it worth it.

I really like the dive tank idea, and the novelty of "my baitwell is strong enough to hold four dive tanks". The only down side I can see is swinging tanks around in such a beautiful boat. I'm not going diving on your boat. No sir, I'm not going to be the one to mark it up.

Congratulations and enjoy it.

Skyler