My personal Mothership....

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by bubblehide

Seriously, contact Jim Day, send him a PM. The guy can fabricate anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... I build shit.

Originally Posted by BrokeLoser

I'm considering a yakima / thule type rack system for the hard-top but I'm not sure if it would take the pounding of the sea. Any suggestions?

Here's the deal. I don't know enough about the Yak/thule system to say if it's any good for marine use but in general racks made for cars are usually too thin, not rigid enough, the wrong type of alloy and eventually sometimes quickly break up and fail.

Aluminum work hardens very quickly, and the stronger the alloy the faster it hardens. What that means as if it bends or flexes it's gets harder and more brittle. With boats especially small ones you have all kinds of motion not found on a truck or car. Pounding swaying rolling through swell all put stress on a rack and if it bends or flexes it work hardens and cracks.

I've built a lot of racks for big boats like this 56 Ocean:

That boat will cruise at 20 knots through six foot seas but it will still roll around a lot, and that inflatable on the rack on the bow weighs about half as much as your boat. In other words the rack is subjected to a ton of stress, and that is on a big solid boat that doesn't bounce around like your boat will in rough conditions.

No matter what kind of racks I build, inflatable, jet ski, Kayak, I always use the same stuff. 6061 T6 Aluminum with a minimum of 1/8 wall thickness. You can weld the shit out of it, it's solid and if the rack is built correctly it won't flex or crack.

Bottom line is there are no maybes. It's not a car it's a boat, and if your rack is not bullet proof it will fail.

Jim