Take A Seat

Seat replacement is an easy, inexpensive way to spruce up your boat for the new season.

by Gary P. Joyce

April 1, 2006

As you're teaching your lovely teenage daughter some of the finer points of docking, she suddenly throws the throttle forward. The helm seat onto which you were clinging for dear life comes right off in your hands as you fly aft.

Even if you don't incur an accident as crazy as the one above, old, worn-out boat seats can be a hazard - for the eyes as well as for safety. While you may never be able to instill your boating prowess in your children, you can easily install a new seat that will shape up the look and feel of your boat.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS
There are several decisions that you'll need to make before installation. Preparation is key, and here are the main items to consider:

• Footprint. Everything will be easier if you adhere to the size of the seat footprint already in the boat; slightly larger - assuming there's physical room - is always better than smaller. Going to the same manufacturer as the seat's OEM (original equipment manufacturer) is a good idea, but not a must.
• Seat styles. If you're planning on putting a sun lounge in the place of a back-to-back, make sure you have the room for the lounge to fold out. A back-to-back that doesn't stretch out is cheaper than one that does, so buying the latter to replace the former, only to find out there isn't enough room, is a waste of cash.
• Seat designs. You could put a 14-inch pedestal seat in your old MasterCraft, but it would look out of place. Don't try and make your boat something it's not.
• Price. You can purchase a plain ol' injection-molded plastic seat for around $60. On the other hand, a high-end custom captain's chair can cost around $3,000 and up. But it's a matter of appropriateness; putting a suspension chair designed for SEAL delivery vehicles in your Grady-White is what's commonly referred to as overkill.

Good captain's chairs from the likes of Wise, Todd, Tracy, Attwood, et al., will run from $130 to under $300 depending on model (this is a complete chair package with hardware, base, seatpads, etc.). Ski-boat style buckets will run in the $200 to $400 range excluding hardware; add another $75 to $100 for that. Suspension bucket seats (e.g. Attwood's Avenir), which provide shock absorption for your butt and back, run in the near-$500 range. Todd offers a nice bucket seat with a pop-up bolster and hardware in the mid- to high-$300s.

INSTALLATION
With lounge seats, there isn't much of a problem of the seat being pulled out of the floor, since the footprint is spread over such a wide area. In other words, you're going overboard or slamming onto the deck long before you're able to exert enough out-and-up force to jack a lounge seat out of its fitting. Not so with pedestal mounts.

One proviso on replacement: You can use the holes drilled for your original seats if there isn't any cracking, splitting or enlargement apparent. You must use backing, no matter what was there prior.

Before going further, check out the product line of Garelick, an aftermarket company that provides the vast majority of OEM seat hardware. The company makes a wide variety of hardware that may be all you'll need to fix up, or otherwise make functional, your present seat. Of course, the easiest approach is to match the pedestal stanchion diameter of your new seat to the old one and use the original base plate, making this a one-minute job. If you want to go for a full change out, you may want to note some of its products as well.

One problem you may encounter when installing a new seat is that many boats will not have access to the area under the seat, and you're going to want to use backing - especially on pedestal seats. If that's the case, Garelick has some answers.

Since you're going to want to back up the base plate of a pedestal, Garelick provides three ways of accomplishing this. For a seat that requires a hole for the stanchion tube to go through the deck surface, it offers a pedestal ring that's made of 3/16-inch by 1/2-inch stainless steel that comes in two parts and covers about 300 degrees of the full circle of the stanchion base. This provides backing for the stanchion plate, and then the pedestal plate is screwed into this via Allen screws. This also allows the entire seat and pedestal to be removed if you should so desire. A simpler option is just using the backing rings - with approximately the same arc of coverage - that through-bolt into the stanchion plate.

A second system is Garelick's proprietary Togger. This works the same as a sheet rock wall anchor. For those of you with no experience with sheet rock, the toggle "ears" fold together and are inserted into a hole drilled to accept the stanchion plate base bolts/screws. When completely through, the arms spring open, you slide down an enclosed collar that attaches to the toggles and then - after removing the plastic guides - screw a base plate into that. This is one clever little system.

KEY PRECAUTIONS
If you're putting in a pedestal seat from scratch, or even if you're utilizing the existing holes from the original seat, make sure the backing is there, or you're guaranteeing yourself an accident.

A sealant under the pedestal mount where it attaches to the floor is a good idea. You don't want water introduced into the hull or into the deck innards via holes. If you drill it, it (water) will come. Use sealant.

As with all projects, adhere to the carpenter's rule: measure twice, cut once. You'll want to make sure the stanchion pole is the correct height so you don't look like you're driving a child's pedal car. A nice upgrade is an adjustable height pedestal, so skippers of all heights are comfortable. If you're mixing and matching (seats, fittings, stanchions), make sure that the seat fittings (spider and/or slide or combo unit) have the same diameter hole as the stanchion (generally diameters between 2-7/8 and four inches).

If you're into running in snotty seas or pounding out for fish in near- to offshore waters, you'll want a heavier-duty unit; go for a stanchion with 1/4-inch walls (most are 1/8-inch), wider tubes and wider base plates. Once you've chosen your seats and fitting, this is probably one of the simpler DIY projects you can undertake, and certainly one that has a lot of eye appeal. Of course, with the seats looking so much better, you'll probably have to change something else, but hey ... that's the way everything goes.

Quick Tips

• When choosing a replacement seat, adhere to the size of the seat footprint already in place, or go slightly larger.
• Stick to similar seat designs - don't try to make your boat something it's not.
• You must use backing on your replacement seat, no matter what was there before.
• Use sealant.