Mounting a downrigger on small boat

[jpjames14]

Hey all,

I have a 10ft sportcat, much like a Livingston except it doesn't have the seating area up the middle. It's got regular seats and then two seats in the back. I have a cannon manual downrigger i want to mount on it. The back two seats, and I by seats I mean fiberglass platforms, are about 6-10 inches below the gunwale. I would like to mount my swivel mount on it, but clearly it's a bit too low and somehow needs to be raised up to meet where the gunwale is. How do you do this?

I'm sure this has been done before but I can't find anything on it.

[eat-sleep-fish]

I have seen guys do that with a piece on angle stainless steel the same width as the base of the downrigger. Fasten it to the side and the seat of the boat so the surface is level with your rail. I did a Google search of "angle bracket for downrigger" and several other options came up. Hope this helps.

[ResQ]

Scroll down the boat threads. I did one of these back in July and one earlier. Just look through.

[scraig1962]

I think the main issue here is you have fiberglass boat and, judging by the pics I found of the boat on Google, there is no access to the backside of the seat platforms. Coming up with a mount for an aluminum boat is a lot easier. The mounting surface will need to be pretty solid if you going to mount it to those seat platforms. If the seats are pretty solid, I would just use a pedestal for the swivel mount similar to this one: and lag them down with lag bolts and silicone sealer. I did something similar on my old aluminum boat, but I saved money by making them from aluminum I got from work. If the mounting surface is real thin, I would think about adding some thick plywood to the top of the seats for the pedestals to mount to.

[jpjames14]

Awesome... All useful information and good places to start. Thanks guys. I do agree it's going to be a bit trickier with the fiberglass and how the seat is designed. I cannot get under it without drilling out a port hole. Regardless of what I do I will want to do that because I need to put on some big washers underneath this thing.

[GCB069]

This is how I did it on a 14' Starcraft...... 2 Aluminum blocks each side screwed and glued with screw on D/R

[dutchman2858]

I had to get into the sides of the cockpit on a pristine 28' Bayliner 2858 when I was rigging it with downriggers for chartering. I believe I drilled holes using a 4" holesaw (AFTER carefully checking for wires, etc.!) and fitting a waterproof hole cover. Works great and looks good.

[obryan214]

the one in my crestliner is mounted to a block of wood mounted to my wood seat top. it raised the bracket up 4" which was plenty.

[jpjames14]

Thanks guys. I purchased a 6inch pedestal mount. Got a decent deal on one through ebay. I still have about 4inches or so I need to raise up so my thought is building a box to mount on top of the seat, then mount the pedestal to that. I'll probably put a door on the box somehow to make more storage. I will use the hole saw and hole cap to cover! Thanks for the tip on that. Picture to come after this mess is done