Das Boot - Part 2

Now on to one of my favorite parts…..seating. Oh wait, that’s sitting! Well never mind, ya gotta have seating for sitting, Indian style was great when I was 8, 40 years later, not so much.

So, I knew from the previous inspection that some of the seats needed to be replaced . Little did I know they ALL would have to be replaced. Are ya’ll getting the idea that maybe I didn’t inspect the boat close enough? Partially true, I knew stuff could have to be done, just underestimated it some. <-----woop woop, understatement of the YEAR!

Oh, before I go any further, I would like to add something that someone so subtly pointed out to me. I AM HAVING FUN DOING THIS, dang near as much fun as I am having complaining about it. OK, fine, it’s a tie…lol (Is that better Kevin?)


So where was I. Oh yeah, replacing seats and cushions. Well I said replace, what I ended up meaning was redoing. Have you ever tried to do a search on a 1981 boat and tried to get replacement items? Yeah, not happening. Somehow when he said it was a “1981” I thought, well dang, I was already in the Air Force (donning denial helmet) it isn’t THAT old…well I beg to differ with myself. Its dang near impossible. I could not find a thing for an Emerson Sea Raider, circa 1981, heck I couldn’t find anything about an Emerson boat period.

(BTW, if any of you internet gurus CAN find something, ANYTHING, send me the link, it would be so very much appreciated)

So we decided to just repair the backs. Nothing very exciting about this process though.

Fun Fact: there are 3,987, 456 staples in the back of each cushion.

Basically it was remove staples, vacuum what was left of the wood back, trace cushion, cut wood, refit and re-staple. And yes, we put dang near that many staples back in. I never said they used too many staples, I was just giving you a count of them.

We cleaned the vinyl and for the most part they look pretty good. I did find two cheap jump seats to save on having to build them since we only had enough jump seat cushions for one anyway. I really lucked out when I ordered them as they seemed to match the existing ones pretty good.

They only hard part about this stage was the front two cushions. I saw a picture of someone else’s boat, where they had replaced the cushions with a custom speaker box. I think I want to do the same thing. So enter Kevin the Master Crafter….He already agreed to try. We’re going to build the box out of plywood and cover it with carpet. That’s the plan anyway

So what’s next?