Urban,

Sorry for the late reply. Too much going on lately.

So far the boat seems to be as solid as ever. Almost all of my trips lately have been in the bay here where it's 5 mph. I've only ran it full bore in the lakes a few times since doing it. My only complaint so far is that there is so much surface area on the bottom of the boat that it seems to create a little more noise when running over rough water. Could be my imagination. I'm planning on getting some sheets of foam and putting them under the bottom deck. I hope this will help muffle the sound and also give me back the flotation I removed.

I used a grinder with a cutting wheel to cut the bench out. Just a small grinder with the standard 4-1/2" wheel will zip through anything pretty quick. The big 9" grinders are prone to getting away from you and that could be a bad thing in a thin aluminim boat! I still have the ugly rough edges exposed on the side. I'm not positive about what i'll do to cover that up yet.

Thanks for the tip with the insulation. My last deck was built the same way and I never really had problems with stuff falling through. I just did it the same way again because truthfully, I didn't even think about it until you mentioned it.

I want to put up some more photos as soon as I get everything in order again. Taking it out in the bay 1-3 times a week was alot of fun, but a little hard on the boat. Live bait and bloody halibut tend to get messy sometimes :)