Mainship 350 Pedestal location and captains chair

[Keith Tiedke]

Greetings ! ...first posting here. We recently bought a used Mainship 350 (1997, with 500 hrs on the engines <no kidding>). We got a really good deal since the previous owner had removed the flooring to the upper helm station (soaked balsa core). I need help with a few things:

- Since we do not have the original flooring, we do not know where the pedestal is supposed to be mounted for the captains chair, so any help with measurements for specific landmarks in the upper helm station would be great. What type of mounting hardware is best to use?

- I see there is a wide variety of captains chairs out there; I'd like to get one that the front part of the seat "flips up", allowing the captain to quickly stand up - and not get pressed against the wheel. Again, any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Stay safe - and many thanks!

 

[Comodave]

Welcome aboard. What ever you do you need to through bolt the seat base and have backing around the nuts on the bottom of the deck. Our boat only had one helm chair. I added a second helm seat so that whoever isn’t driving has a good seat and view around the boat. I didn’t want to take down the headliner to backup the pedestal base. So I did all the work from the top. I mounted a base plate that has a 3” hole in the middle. Then used a hole saw to cut out the 3” of fiberglass deck in the middle of the mount. I took 3/8” aluminum pieces and tapped them for 1/4-20 thread. Slid the aluminum pieces under the mount and bolted the mount to the deck using 1/4-20 bolts into the aluminum pieces. Then mounted the pedestal to the mount on the deck. It has been 4 years and the seat is still good where it is bolted to the deck.