depends on the type and size of dinghie lots of people like to wrap or cover the bow rails in a water proof material to help keep the water out if you have bow rails also ading a wind screen maybe a good idea if your dinghie has the bow space another mod that i have done in our last dinghie is make a fuel tank brace to stop the portibale tank moving around when it gets abit choppy you may also consider adding rod holders ect that most dinghies have. hope that helps

I could not get my tinny to sit correctly in the water at normal going speeds, but a $25 tiller extention made all the difference and now it is a sweet missile as I can sit in the middle of the thing.

Added a floor so I can stand (When very calm and added a holdon rope to the front like the surf inflatables) when going and get a better view of what is under the surface.

To easily add rodholders is still a bit of an unsolved problem as this tinny has got no internal ribs.

There are loads of brilliant and mostly simple ideas around that are easily replicated 

I have fitted little plastic anchor wells to my tinnies,and alloy rod bent into rod holders that bolt into your rollic holes

before we brought our bigger boat we had a old 14 ft quintrex like 1979 model. Quite old. Many times we used to fish at night on the cockburn sound. we added a light . got an old truck battery set up in the middle of the deck set up on rubber matting with a broomstick and bolted to the  top a decent light. connect it up to the truck battery , we would ave light for hours and hours nice and cheapo n lasted easily a few days before needin charge.

Depends on what size you are talking. I made an alloy box in the seat of 1 and plumbed it. It was a live bait tank, bait tank, sml kill tank and extra storage for trays depending on the day. Wasnt hard to do. $60 and a few hours work. If you cut the hole out neat, you can then use it for the lid. As for rod holders I dropped a couple of flush mount ones in the seat either hd plastic or aluminium. Suction cap nav lights. Made a box with a switch panel in it to protect wires and had a sounder/GPS mount on top. I also did the flat floor thing although it would be no good if you are roof topping. Those plastic clips are great as well for holding all sorts of things like gaffs, oars ect. The list goes on and on. There is a good mag called "fitting out a small boat for estury and inshore fishing" by Jeff Webster that is a valuable read.

My half share in my dinghy cost $200, the other owner has been in canada for two years and is currently in the uk. A new prop with better pitch for hole shot $350 New trailer springs $150, hubs, rims and tyres $200, bearing buddies ~$60, Second hand furuno 600l Sounder(thanks Tony $50), epirb $600, vhf radio $400, offshore/ inshore flare kit ~$300, gaff, net, vertical berkley 4 rod locking holders $35, prawning lights $70, removable nav lights $30. Boat=Bring on another thousand. Oh and my dad rebuilt my trailer for me.

http://fishwrecked.com/forum/tinnie-sale

A floor is a must in my opinion.

P.S Its still for sale

i have an anchor well up front and the hatch folds out has a bait bored on the back, and then once opened my little esky fits snug in the whole, carpet the seats, chum bucket on the back, hook up a car stero, knife/pliers holder, cup holder. keep it simple and pack light!

Had my tinny for over 10 years now. Didn't have to do many mod's but have replaced everything a couple times.

Replace the motor 6 years ago and the trailer 3 years ago. Re,did all the floor and reinforced as well.

One thing i had to do was add lights to the boat for night fishing.

Time to get a new boat i think LOL.

 Have just bought a 3.6 metre dinghy was wondering how hard it is to make the false floor or decking, any help regarding this appreciated, also fish finder where you you guys put it?

You need a couple of ribs inside to do this as otherwise you hole the hull with screws.

Could make a cover, from it from an icecream container to a small console, to house the electronics in away from the spray.

pics of your tub would be noice!

Will put the pics up when i get around to it, but dont want to put any holes in the hull, i dont mind drilling where the seats go, by ribs do you mean weld bars across then putting the board on top like slats.

Most tinnies have internal "ribs" that run from the bottom keel to the top gunnels.

They have a profile where the outside edges are in touch to the hullskin and the midldle is away frm the hullskin.

This  part can be used to fasten runners or straight board/planks etc. to.

 Carefully screw to without the screws being to long to penetrate the hull skin.

(bestest way for me to explain, sorry)

My tinny has no "ribs" making it a wee bit akward.

But,.. then again it is just so much lighter- faster

Best thing you can do to a tinnie wrap it in Fibreglass

I made up some side pockets out of marine ply, going from the front seat to the back. ( Just one board plus the brackets on each side) Fixing them to the seats with L-shape brackets. Amazing how much more organised it makes things, nothing sliding all over the floor. Also for rod holder I screwed some plastic pipe to the seats but on an angle. To get the screws through the plastic pipe, cut a hole on one side so you can get the screwdriver through.

Danny.

 put in a wood floor in, added 10 rod holders and gps and fish finder brackets, and jerry can holders

put a floor into it i had deck lights side and rear lights nav lights a furuno moncrome sounder and navman gps also had rod holders on the front for when we were moving six rod holders for fishing a bildge pump a spot light! and we also painted it with squid ink! lol

purely for freshwater fishing and trolling. I dont have it anymore though, no room for it at the house!!

For what I used it for, it was pretty well spot on to use solo or with a "deckie"

after some looking at ideas I have done the following with the "Blank canvas" tinny I bought!

It goes hard with the 18HP and me sitting in the central seat bench!

With the simple additions of an extended tiller and a bit of aly angle & 2 cable ties for the gearbox lever extender plus the emercency cut out I am in full control of the boat and can fish/troll by myself!

Thanking all who have contributed in a positive matter.

Hope this is of help to other members!

Further info;

I already bought a VHF portable waterproof radio so that is now used.

Epirb comes with me as are the flares and the old monochrome lyingbird debtsounder fishindicator was surplus to requirments from the biggun.

Battery is from my old classic falcon  as I get a new one (every 3 years, it is only a toy car) as to not be stranded when used.

Trailer came from local rag and I changed the springs, bearings, new waterproof lights, welded in a new main draw bar and added some more strenght into it.

Overall a very economical tinny  with a great hull shape that does NOT bang into the waves, but slices through it making it very comfortable. 

It is a bit like riding a motorcrosser without a helmet, Heaven   !!

Thinking of adding bimini, but not at the cost of topspeed losses of this attack machine

Love the idea for the gear selector Glastro, my pet peeve on my first boat that was a little tinny was the gear selector on the side of the motor.

I'll follow trend and put up some pics of my dory and what I did to it too.

Bought the hull about a year ago, reason was we were getting bored with the north metro area and wanted something that was cheap to run and tow and was easily mobile for running up the coast for weekends or day trips. Also my other boat, a 25year old half cab was getting a bit worn down and needed a few months( a year later still in the process) of maintenance/ rebuild and life with out some form of boat would be unbearable.

Fitted it out with the view that it would be an ocean dinghy and needed to be a little boat with big boat safety, we had to be able to fish/dive off it and it had to have the safety gear and reliability of a bigger boat and due to its size have the survivability to deal with any dramas that may come up without the help available out of metro area and go out past 3 miles offshore weather permitting.

Bought it as a bare unoptioned hull with only the floor from allboats, without the trailer or motor.

Dropped it on a new trailer and took it to the guys at marineline who sorted it out with 3/4 length grabrails, large step and ladder, transducer bracket and a few plates here and there for nav lights and spot light, all done for under 600 bucks and they did an awesome job, sat in the drive way smiling at it for a few hours the night i brought it home.

Settled on the 3cyl 2st yamaha 30hp for the motor. I wanted a pull start motor with a rectifier/alternator fitted to charge the battery, reason was if i lost the electrics i could still start my motor without having to remove the flywheel cover, if i lost the motor i could still run my electrics off the battery and if i lost the battery the motor produced the juice to keep the bilge,radio and gps powered.

Fitted out the electrics with everything that was either spare parts or interchangeable from the bigger boat to keep it on the cheap by only having to buy new mounting brackets and cables. runs with a Lowrance 7200globalmap plotter networked to a  lowrance dsc VHF and an old flush mounted lowrance monochrone sounder that had been sitting unused in the shed for a few years. Also with Nav lights,small mounted docking/spot light, bilge pump and 12v power outlet all running back to a small console built out of marine ply and carpeted just infront of my thwart. Put in a heap of rod holders, one up on the bow for the dive flag, two on the console for the bait board, 4 on the port side for rod storage and just replaced the two rear trolling holders with stainless ones, had plastic 45 degree holders that both snapped on their first hook ups trolling.

Big thing for me on boats is storage and less clutter, boat hook "clips" were great for keeping the dive flag, oars, boat hook and gaff out of the way clipping against the front of the thwarts. Next step with some funding will be to install two hatches either side of the glove box for more storage but that will involve removing floatation and i probably should spend money on finishing off the other boat....

Pretty stoked with it really as its opened up so much more up the coast for us and cheap as chips to run. motor gets between 2 to 3 nm per litre. Probably have more peace of mind with this one seeing everything is new and its performed well as an ocean dinghy. done alot of long rangeish trips 30-50 nm running along the shore from jurien to cervanetes diving as far as green islands performed well off exmouth and down south and works great for me solo out of hillarys.

I've had a few tinnys and the first thing I do to them is a floor.

In my old cartopper I attatched some 50x50x3 ali angle to the seats with rivits and sikaflex, found an old street sign and cut it down to the size I needed, glued down some carpet,

filled the void under the floor with foam (floatation and to support the floor through the middle)and then screwed it down.

Any more people with ideas/ pictures of their dinghy modifications?

and the windscreen is handy to keep spray and wind off, middle bench has been removed which leaves heaps of floor space, of course we bought it like this but was the selling point! thinkiing of putting a steering wheel in it as it has all the mounts already  and holes cut out, whats the go with them how much are they usually gna sting?

Anchor well

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

side decks and side pockets

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

and then bought a bigger boat!

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 here is the topic !