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 Article written by Capt. Steven Lamp of the Key West Fishing Team. 4/6/09
Here at my marina I rand into a fella that had some SeaDek on his boat. He had it customer made to fit the bow of his little flats boat. He raved about the product. That was a year and half ago. Now, I am not one to wait to take advantage of a great thing, but in this situation here we have a flats boat, hard core sunshine a greasy marina and other elements that just plain suck for a boats deck. So I waited, a whole year to see if the stuff would hold up, stay adhered to the deck, and or even be there after the Florida Keys sunshine had its way with it. It did.
I have been looking for an alternative to painting the deck of my Lake and Bay flats boats as they come from the factory with the worlds worst non skid. It gets so dirty so easy. When I got a new Lake and Bay I would immediately put it in my shop and prep it to be painted with a light coat of clear Awl Grip on the non skid. This as you can imagine is a PITA, every two years having to do this. I needed an alternative.
I called Chuck at SeaDek told him I wanted to check out his product. He sent me a piece that I put on a high traffic boat of mine for 6 months. FYI that piece still looks new. All that and I finally got with Chuck and he sent out a guy to digitally measure my Flats Boat to get every detail.
In the process of asking questions and doing all of this he told me that the decking has a self adhesive that will stick to  anything. The digital measurements go right into a C C machine and cuts the stuff to fit exactly to the measurements. It all sounded like a fairy tail till it came together. I am VERY impressed.
The package of pieces came to my door in a box. Each piece was laid out and numbered with a diagram of where each one went to put on the boat. Like a puzzle. I laid all the pieces out to get acquainted with it and went to work prepping my deck.
What I did to prep my deck was not necessary as the sticky stuff will stick to ANYTHING. Let me say again.. ANYTHING. This stuff is way Sticky.. Let me go on.
I prepped my deck by sanding the whole thing to gloss smooth and buffed it to perfect. Yes I took all the molded non skid off and made the deck like the hood of my car. I wanted to do it this way for two reasons. One to get the maximum adherence and two to have a nice buffed look between the pieces of SeaDek.
 Installing was easy. Before I pulled any backing tape I wiped the entire deck down with Acetone to remove wax or dust or anything that would prevent a good stick. Then, once piece at a time I Just lined up the piece along each section of deck and put it down from one end to the other so not to get bubbles under the decking. There were about 25 pieces in all. The back section was a challenge but came out better than I thought. I then walked around on the deck to ensure all pieces were seated and then inspected for bubbles. I found one bubble and took care of it with a rigging needle poked through the piece to the deck to create an air passage way. No problem
 Once I was done I let it sit for a day in the sun then washed it to get my foot prints off. This I thought was going to be the bad part. Greasy foot prints or dust prints.. No issues... Came off with a mild soap and gentle scrubbing, took me about 1 minute to clean boat to what you see here in Photos.
I love the stuff. it feels like I am walking on Gel soled clouds. I cant tell you how it has made my knees feel being on the water as much as I am. Also, I cant wait to do my other boats.
There are many products out there that promise this or that. SeaDek lived up to the promise they made to me. I wont have a boat without it. |
