Boathouse Upgrades

As many of you know, our new boat is in a boathouse, which is awesome, but it also means that in addition to addressing issues on the boat, I also have to periodically address issues on this floating garage, too.

So far, I’ve done the following:

I’ve braced the pulley support on the boathouse wall. This is used to draw the curtain open and closed.

The previous owner just had a 2×2 holding the pulleys in place. That 2×2 flexed quite a bit when drawing the curtain open and closed.
A simple 2×4 supporting the 2×2 that the previous owner installed.

I covered some holes in the floors. This was an opening so you could see how the boathouse extension was tied together. At some point in the past, an additional 4 feet or so was added to the structure. These holes were left open, and they seemed like a good trip/fall exposure, so I covered them.

This hole shows how the two segments of the boathouse are connected. Needs a lid!
The clubhouse woodshop had some spare plywood sitting around. Makes for good lid.

I installed a hand-hold to make getting off the boat out of the pilothouse a little easier.

Nothing too fancy – just a handle to grab when exiting the boat through the pilothouse door.
You can see the handle above the blue rope (line, in boat-terms). I think the previous owner thought the line was sufficient, but if I tug hard enough, I’m the zip-ties holding it in place will fail.

The braces holding the 2×4 poles in place were rusted through. There were a few L-brackets sitting around in the boathouse, so I removed the rusty bits and replaced them with those L-brackets.

Gross rusted brackets, neatly painted over.
Big thick L-bracket. I’m sure there’s a better bracket to use, but it’s what I had on hand.

There’s lots more to do. There’s always more to do, but that’s it for the moment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *