Finally doing something to my Seacraft

[FossilMan]

Hello all. I grew up fishing with my dad in Miami on his 1972? Seacraft with an I/O for many years. We went everywhere with that boat. Several trips to Bimini and 30 miles out off of Marco Island and trolling offshore the rest of the time. My brother in law has a 1974 SF. Sixteen years ago I bought my 1976 MA with the intentions of fixing it up. Well, I started that project and managed to replace the fuel tank, change the engine to a 225 Johnson and replaced all of the wiring and the coring on the cap. Fast forward 16 years and I've had that boat in the water about 3, maybe 4 times. I lost interest in the project and became busy with life. I thought about selling it a few times, but never put an ad in the paper or anything. For some reason, I kept that boat...stored in Miami then a few years at my house in Venice and now it resides in my shop again. A couple of months ago my 5 year old woke up one morning came straight to my room and asked if we could go fishing. Well, I didn't go to the shop that day. We went fishing. Every chance we had, we would go fishing....off the beach, the pier, at the boat ramp, from my canoe, from the john boat. Finally, he asked why don't we use the boat that is at work. ( I also have a 1961 13' Whaler that lives on the top shelf of the pallet rack) That was my "AHA!" moment. Why the heck don't we use the boats? Now I have the bug and motivation to do something about it. The Whaler and Seacraft are running again. They haven't touched water yet, but we're getting there. That 225 is way too much so I'm going to re power with a Yamaha 150 shortly and when things slow down in the winter, I am going to tear it apart and do what I had always envisioned. Hopefully, it won't take another 16 years. I've dealt with a few of you out there. I apologize if I forget some names, but Terry and Todd come to mind. There's my long winded intro. Some of the pics were from way back when.