smallest boat to put center console in and deck

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Mattyf19

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whats the smallest jon I could put a center console into and deck to run an OB Jet? thinking that realistically ill be fishing myself most of the time, just wondering what i'd be able to get away with.
 
You're pretty much asking an unanswerable question because just when you think you've seen it all along comes something else but.... My answer for general purposes would be that a 1436 would be at the smaller end. You will find people that will say 12' but noone is going to argue with a 1436. You won't get a jet any smaller than a 20HP and the room required for a console (with steering) leaves very little room for anything else in the boat. You could possibly do a 12' hull with a tiller or stick steer (no deck, no console) but for the money you'd spend on the setup, the cost/benefit relationship doesn't make sense to me. One thing that is probably true is that a small boat will make you wish you'd bought one two foot longer to begin with.
 
I don't think I'd go smaller than a 1448 myself. I have a 1652 which I thought was bigger than I needed but has turned out to be a really good fit. If you're really sure you won't need 16' then a 1548 would be a more comfortable choice. My Lowe center console is one of the narrowest and it's still 19" wide so there isn't a lot of room to get around it. I think a 1436 would be too narrow with a center console. Here's a picture of my 1652 (with floor and sides) with the 19" wide console to get an idea of how much room there is.

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I am sure if you look around enough on the internet you will find pictures of just about every sort of small boat out there with a center console.

When I was doing research for putting a center console on my 1754, I saved literally hundreds of photos of small boats. The smallest I could find in that batch is a micro skiff. See picture below.

IMG00462-20120502-1949.jpg

Here is what my current console looks like from the back. This console is 20" wide. The floor is 60" wide in the area the console is mounted. That is a 13-1/2" steering wheel so you can see that I could have narrowed the console down to about 15".

back view.jpg

In my case I move around a lot in the boat, so I needed a good bit of room around the console for my girlish 260 lb. frame to fit. That is also the reason I did not install a traditional grab bar that mounts to the exterior of the console. That would have taken up more room.

Rob
 
Center console on my lowe 1652. I installed it myself. Never cared much for tiller steer. (just personal preference. Not bashing them)
 

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I attached the wrong pic. here you go.
 

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You can deck and center console a 1542 but I would not go any narrower than 42" at the bottom unless you had a really really skinny console. All I did was take my side console and have another side welded onto it. Decked the whole boat except for the area between the middle two benches.
 
I'm ~230 lbs +/- and I have a 1436 with a side console and it takes up 14" of floor space and it's JUST enough room along it for me to be comfortable moving without tipping the boat - but I keep my weight on the centerline of the boat when I walk - you are going to be at minimum a full foot away from it as you won't even be able to get the edge of your foot closer than 9" off center.

Not to poke fun, but how big a guy are you? 36" wide seems to be the narrowest boat suggested. 18" seems to be about the footprint of the smallest consoles you can buy without custom fabbing one, even then you're only saving 3" or so based on the space requirements for the steering wheel hardware. Can you even fit in the 9" of floor space between the edge of the console and the side of a 36" wide boat? That's about the space it takes to put your feet side by side. I know I certainly couldn't.

If you're a big guy not only are you going to have issues fitting but you're going to put all your weight on the very edge of the boat & it's going to tip - then your only point to steady yourself is going to to be the center console which you're going to then apply a top-heavy force to further tipping the boat in the direction it was already headed. You can swim right?

A 1448 would be the bare minimum I'd want a center console in. Even that little skiff EBUG posted a pick of has some ghetto booty along the waterline below the gunwales & outside the floor space that no doubt enhanced its stability.
 

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