I have a 16' bass tracker and the rear deck plywood and carpet were shot.

After a few hours of intricatly stringing together colorful language; I now have the old plywood out and the replacement ready to go. I am not really all that thrilled about carpet going back in. I was thinking about bed liner with HD traction tape strung across every foot or so.

What are my options? What have you seen that you wished you had in your boat? The oly thing off the table is texurised diamond plate (too expensive and I already have the replacement wood).

first off get some fiberglass resin and seal every nook and cranny of the new wood even if its marine grade.
bed liner gets slick when wet, if carpet is not an option get some epoxy paint and some fine sand. paint the wood with 2 coats and toss some sand on it and, let that dry and then 2 more coats.
this is a good deck surface and I have used it 4 times on other boats.
just don't use too much sand, it does not take much to get traction.

cabelas and bass pro carry a boat floor covering that is already textured and just paints on. seems to be working well and doesnt get too hot

I just painted mine and bought an additive with it for tracction works great

+1

Feel free to put down some fiberglass cloth as well. Wont cost or weigh much and will double the life span of the deck.

+2

Hopalong I am gonna go with your idea. Cajun that a great bonus idea, strengthens the whole deal and only cost about $5 extra to boot. If I am going to do it I may as well do it right.

I'll post pictures when it's finished.

So....... I finished up the project

I followed the advice of the above esteemed posters (thanks guys )

The board was cut to size and the old hardware mount holes drilled using the old board as a template.

Then it came time to lay the glass. I have never done it before. I found a video or 2 on YouTube and laid out my cloth and let it rest and smoothed until it went flat. Then I did the top which went really well and I was happy with the results.Then I found out I suck at doing/wrapping edges. I got to the point that I just painted the edges and 2-3 inches of the bottom edge with resin and called it good. After sanding it actually looked like a half decent job, I probably would have asked for a discount if I had paid to have someone do it, but for a first time I was fairly pleased.

The epoxy paint was a pretty straight forward affair. I coated the bottom in a layer, cured it and flipped it over. I laid the first coat on the top fairly heavy and then before it dried I applied my traction agent (the kids will never notice a cup of sand missing from the sandbox) with a hand held garden spreader set to it's finest setting. Coat two went on normal thickness and the whole thing got baked in my garage for 2 days in this lovely heat of ours.

Then came time to mount. The old screws were [censored] so I wanted to go heavier and/or better. SO after marking my stringers and my drill lines I laid the floor and drilled my first two holes. This worked like [censored]. the stringers were not strong enough to hold the threads of the screws. As soon as they got through the aluminum they just punched all the way down (since I already had the holes drilled I left them in a sealed them to the board with epoxy for additional lateral stability and to keep the holes filled). I ended up having to go with blind rivets. Problem was that I needed a long grip to go through the plywood,stringer, and epoxy. After tearing up the phone lines I ended up heading to Southerland's to get the appropriate fasteners. Since I was using pop rivets I ended up using more fasteners than I had planned on just to spread the load around more evenly but the results were really good.

In the end I have a great floor. I dropped a socket on it while I was installing my accessories and it sounded like it hit slate. The tread is fantastic and the fit is perfect. This was a lot of work, but I expect that it will be at least another 20 years before that floor needs to be done again.

Here are the pictures:

Finished floor

IMG_7421 by fyoutoo, on Flickr

Non slip coating with a quarter for reference. Kinda blurry but you get the idea.

IMG_7422 by fyoutoo, on Flickr

I sealed the rivet heads with epoxy paint. I wanted to seal the wood around the countersinks. One again quarter for reference

IMG_7424 by fyoutoo, on Flickr

The screws I tried to use

IMG_7425 by fyoutoo, on Flickr[/img]