Steve, that V-6 I/O should be a nice rig, with plenty of power and smoother than the I-4's!
I've had zero problems with soft decks anywhere on my boat, but I'm just the second owner and always been careful with drilling holes in cored decks. Shouldn't be too hard to cut off the top skin, remove the rotted wood and replace with fresh balsa core, which will absorb resin much better than the foams. Pianewman is in the process of doing that to the front deck of his Seafari, and he said a toothed semicircular blade on a Fein tool worked real well. He was able to remove the entire front deck in one piece, and your step down is smaller than that.
I've been thinking about adding a second bilge pump to my boat also, up in the bow under the bunks, just forward of the bulkhead where the head is located. I think Fr. Frank had one up there in his Seafari. I think the 2x4 keelson is under the stepdown, so not enough room to put a pump under it, but plenty of room forward of the bulkhead forward of the head. When the boat is at the dock, the front of the hull is typically deeper in the water than the stern and water collects up forward, so it makes sense to put a pump and float switch up there. I had a small leak in the scupper tubes on one Bahama trip, and every morning when I got on the boat, the bilge pump in the back of the boat would come on after I got on the boat and water ran to the back. I was thinking about running the discharge line aft up under the cockpit shelf and teeing it in to the thru-hull for the galley seat drain. Might have to dig out some foam under the cockpit shelf to do that. If you just put a thru-hull above the chine up in the bow, I think you'd take on water when punching into big waves!
Does the front hatch under the bunks open to the entire hull like mine does, or does it just have a gel coated box under there like the side hatches? (I think the later models had boxes, but mine was open for access to the thru-hulls and hoses for the head.) Denny
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