[Bushwacker]

Potter made a number changes to the cap and inner liner over the years. One major hull change was the shift from the original Moesly design with 4 narrow stringers (see 1st attachment below) to the 2 wide box stringers. If your boat is a 72 or earlier like mine, it should look like the first pic below, which shows where I added a second battery between the 2 stringers under stbd seat. The 4-6" deep area was filled with foam to the top of the stringers and painted with gray paint, so I simply dug out the foam and found enough room for a big Group 27 battery box. That area should be covered with glass in the later models.

It looks like the change to the wide 2 stringer system was made by just connecting the inner section of the inboard stringer and the outer section of the outboard stringer of the earlier design with a couple of layers of glass. The 2nd picture below is the 2-stringer hull of a Seafari owned by a guy near me that he had butchered to turn it into a CC. (At least we got the cap off it for Skip & Carla's Seafari 21!) He claimed it was a '73 he had inherited from his dad. Looks like Potter may have used a wide piece of foam as the form for the stringers, which were hollow on the 4-stringer models, and installed about half way thru the layup. I have seen other restorations of '73 models with 4 stringers, so I believe 1973 was a transition year, when both 2 and 4-stringer hulls were made. I believe he may also have raised the deck a couple inches when the switch to the 2 stringer system was incorporated. If a boat has the raised deck, the scupper depression will be 2-3" deep instead of about 1" deep like it is on mine.

Today I found a picture in a 1974 brochure (2nd .pdf attachment) showing the white fiberglass bulkhead configuration and raised windshield that Capt. Terry describes in his boat. (note the additional non-opening panel at bottom of WS in lower picture; upper picture of white boat is from '72 brochure and does not show that extra panel.) I've noticed that the center of the V in the windshield is only about 6" aft of the hatch on the later models, but that distance is about 18" on my boat. Potter evidently moved the bottom of the windshield forward about a foot to create more room aft of the windshield, but if he didn't move the top of the windshield as much, that would create the more steeply raked appearance on the later models that Terry mentioned. Last pic shows the plywood bulkhead in my boat that's attached to the cap and inner liner with screws at top and bottom and appears to be covered in some sort of (badly faded!) wood grained contact paper. Based on the brochure, I believe the windshield and bulkhead change, along with the raised deck, larger gas tank/smaller step down for cabin door, teak cabin shelves, and glove compartment at top of bulkhead were all incorporated on the 1974 models.