Removing the deck of a 46' express cruiser Ultimate Dive Boat

There is no safe way of getting divers in the water without a door. The dive platform and the aft deck should not be more than a few inches off.

 

With 20 divers; he is going to need more than 1 door. I doubt the hull was designed for that, but I am only making an observation; not anything else.

 

Sam, most of the "evaluations" you've posted are full of biased based errors, that fly in the face of true. The generalities opinionated, are little more than an old curmudgeon's view on the market, the boats he usually sees and have little relevance, to the statistical realities he has his head in the sand over.

I disagree, I've "fallen" over the side many times, with few issues, so long as I remember to hold my mast. Stepping into the drink is handy, but not absolutely necessary.

I also think we've chased off the OP, as he hasn't been here in the last two pages of posts.

 

Well, this Sea Ray construction looks to be pretty dubious to me. Gelcoat, polyester "hamburger helper" putty and a layer of woven roving. This pic is from here Are They Fiberglass Boats Anymore? by David Pascoe, Marine Surveyor http://www.yachtsurvey.com/Fiberglass_Boats.htm which I posted before. What is not true in that article? What are the biased base errors?

I read somewhere else ( I can't find the site now) that Sea Ray had 3 boat yards in Florida and were producing similar hulls 2 different ways at the same time, two more or less solid glass and one with cored glass. With multiple factories under different management in a pretty much handmade product it only seems reasonable that quality could very easily be different depending on where it was made. Maybe your Sea Rays are quality boats, actually I'm sure they are, as you are quite knowledgeable and know good from bad and what to look for, but that pic is a Sea Ray boat made from "stuff" that suffered maximum damage from minimal impact.

Here's from a forum of a guy defending the quality of his Sea Ray (although primarily he's expounding on how he skillfully manhandled the insurance companies, which is true.) but I doubt he really knows what he's talking about. First, he says putting in a transducer,

Right. 4.5" of solid fiberglass. Sure. I think they drilled through a side stringer and the deck. Then he posts some pictures and goes on to say

I don't know why the above photo won't post, here is the site...
SeaRay hull quality http://www.boatingabc.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/462967/SeaRay_hull_quality.html





To me, that looks like a low speed impact, no gouges or scrapes, no transfer of the other boats paint or pieces. The depth of penetration looks to be no further than the gently bent handrail, and yet in the middle photo the damage seems to go across the entire deck with two huge cracks, similar to broken pottery, with no visible signs of any "fiberglass" in the cracks. The last photo looks to confirm minimal penetration, the bottom half of the damage being wedged outward and just a big rip in the hull, ripped like a piece of cardboard.

I wasn't really posting to debate the quality of any particular brand of boats and I could have been less cryptic and more informative, but I was clumsily hinting to the OP, who I realized had quit posting but figured he was probably still looking, that even though Mexico could probably give a flying duck about the welfare or safety of any person or of any rules or regulations, there were issues about some Sea Ray boats, especially from the '80s but certainly not limited to the '80s. Or even limited just to Sea Rays. So, if a person wants to do a major engineering change to something that has been made to capitalize on every bit of structure to replace as much expensive material as possible, he might first want to make sure the hull was worth the effort.