27 Full Cabin: Details of Construction and Removal of Cabin Top

[Smithy3070]

I [may buy] a 27 FULL CABIN boat. I want to remove the cabin, but I would like to be certain the gunwales would be intact once the cabin was removed. I am not sure if the cabin is just an added feature.

To anyone who has removed the cabin from a 27 FULL CABIN and converted it to an open center console, your input would be appreciated.

[jimh]

I doubt anyone will qualify and be able to reply. If you need a 27-foot Boston Whaler center console boat, you would be much better served to find one made in that configuration, rather than to alter a 27 FULL CABIN. That same hull was available as a 27 CENTER CONSOLE CUDDY.



c. 1988 CENTER CONSOLE CUDDY, originally from CETACEA Page 04.



Also look for GUARDIAN 27 boats, again using the same hull. There should be many of these around as they were often used in law enforcement. There is quite a famous GUARDIAN 27: the one that appeared in the Hollywood cinematic feature STRIKING DISTANCE staring Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker. The Boston Whaler GUARDIAN 27 gets more screen time than the then-young Ms. Parker.

As an owner of a Boston Whaler cabin boat that was built atop a center console hull, I tend to strongly recommend against trying to tear off the cabin superstructure and make the boat into a center console. There are many problems. Perhaps the most daunting: the cabin boat will not have at least four or five or six molded hatch covers that will be needed to cover the deep lockers in the bow area that were under the cabin. To duplicate the original molded and laminated hatch covers will be impossible. I have seen a few boats where the lockers are covered by not particularly well-done plywood home-made hatches: an awful look. Another problem: dozens and dozens of screw fastener holes to be repaired. Of course, you will need a center console. Finding an actual Boston Whaler center console of appropriate size will be difficult. Typically these conversions do not end up well.

If you want a center console boat, buy one. Don't hack up a cabin boat. You'll save a lot of time, labor, and probably money buying a center console, and you will have a better boat. Trying to re-sell a home-made center console hacked out of a cabin boat will likely be difficult.

[biggiefl]

I would probably say it is impossible to do that conversion unless you perhaps worked at the Whaler factory, and even then I doubt it.

[Smithy3070]

Thanks for the input. I will keep looking and abandon the idea of a conversion. Don't want to get into something that could be an impossible project.