Ideas for Boat Storage:
Stick It! (Somewhere)
Storage space is at a premium in small boats. Here are some of the things we did in Toy Boat 2...This kind of storage is for stuff that is used periodically during the day - things that need to be kept secured, perhaps protected from spray and sun, but also need to be accessible. Here are the things we did in Toy Boat 2:
We
used ice chests with deck tiedowns to provide enclosed storage.
Ice chests are available in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, colors and
materials.
We chose two Igloo 25 quart ice chests to replace the factory stern quarter jump seats. The standard Igloo tiedown kit and some SS screws were used to secure them to the deck. (Note: regarding the picture to the right, the loose end of the strap is normally tucked up under the tight portion of the strap; it's NOT left loose on the deck.)
The port ice chest is used for food & drinks, the starboard one is used for things like rod belts, gloves, jumper cables, extra reel spools, marker floats, etc. etc.
These ice chests have generally worked out well.The biggest drawback so far is that they are not watertight. The lids are a simple friction fit, and a direct shot of water on the seam can result in water inside. Another minor issue is that they need a more rigid lid. We might add some 1/2" plywood with custom cushions to the lids later.
In
front, we used an Igloo 120 quart cooler as a fish box. This ice
chest sits directly behind the casting platform, and in front of the console
seat. We use shock cord to keep it centered. We can also replace it with a
72 quart version which is closer to the width of the console.
This ice chest also needs a more rigid top, but it is more watertight because the lid has latches and a deeper groove in the top.
Both ice chests are remarkably effective at retaining cold. A 20 lb bag of ice in the larger chest has minimal melting at the end of the day, unless it's extremely warm. Fish packed in the cooler with salt water and ice are almost too cold to hold at the end of the day.
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The Luggage Rack
Every time we've been on a center console, if there isn't under-deck storage, everything winds up on the seat in front of the console, or loose on the deck. Often things fall off, or get underfoot. To combat this, we decided to build a removable rack that mounts in front of the console.
The first pass of the rack was built out of schedule 40 PVC pipe, mainly to get an idea of the proper dimensions. By making it fairly narrow, we left enough room on the sides so that the vertical rod racks on the console could still be used. This left about 28" of usable shelf length. By spacing the shelves about 14" apart vertically, there was enough room left for fairly sizeable bags.The PVC version worked out pretty well. Of course, it didn't last very long in rough water. After a couple of trips in 6' short period swells, the end result was this:We had a friend of ours with a machine shop put together the same basic rack in SS tubing, with some minor tweaks in dimensions. The result is shown below.
One of the things we changed in the SS version was to lower the overall height. The PVC version was too tall, requiring us to remove the rack everytime the boat went into the garage. So we had our friend shorten the SS version enough so that the rack could stay in place all the time. Or so we thought...
As it turns out, we made the SS version about 1" too high. Now the top edge of the rack clears the upper tension bar on the garage door, but catches the lower garage door tension bar by about an inch.
We couldn't raise the garage door any more, and we couldn't shorten the legs of the rack any more. In the end, we put together a couple of simple slider gadgets that we place on the top front crossbar of the rack. When we drive out, these sliders contact the garage door tension bar, and as we continue to drive slowly forward, pop the door up an inch or so without us having to lift the door.
As far as other improvements go, it turns out we made the bottom shelf a bit too low. In its current position, the bottom shelf prevents us from fully opening the lid of the compartment beneath the console seat.
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Ye Old Milk Crate
Talk about time-tested technology...But there's something to be said for the milk crate, even if they don't use them to deliver milk anymore. They're undeniably tough, UV-resistant, drain instantly, and are well ventilated. Just be careful about the ones purchased at "foo-foo" decorator stores like ...well - you know the culprits. Make sure they are heavy duty and water, gas, and UV-resistant, otherwise they may disintegrate in long-term use
Everything in a skiff will ultimately get wet or damp. As far as your gear goes,
the only question is whether or not you need something to be kept "really,
really dry" (waterproof), or are OK with "pretty dry most of the
time" (water-resistant). 
In our bass boat, we kept our tackle in Plano 3700
clear plastic boxes and Tackle Logic folders / pouches, and just tossed them
into the storage compartments. No need for a separate tackle box unless we were
fishing from a friend's boat.
Boating gear wound up in compartments under the bench seat, in the bow
anchor locker, or in a rear storage locker.
Most of those choices are not available in Toy Boat 2.
The front bow compartment is pretty large, but is dominated by our much
bigger anchor, 300 feet of primary anchor rode + chain, the secondary
anchor and 200 feet of rode + chain, and the boat fenders. The
small ice chests on the stern don't have enough room to carry the amount of
tackle we normally lug around, and the big ice chest in front is
for fish. So we were stuck with leaving all of our tackle above-decks in the
luggage rack.
We wanted to keep using the clear Plano boxes for most fishing
tackle, rather than hard tackle boxes, so we decided to buy
water-resistant or water-proof tackle bags to hold them. We
started with a couple of the West Marine tackle bags shown to the right.
These are pretty large, front-opening bags, with a stiff bottom, and a
vinyl-coated shell that sheds water.
These bags were OK, but there were a few issues:
-
The front opening design did not work well with our luggage rack
shelf design.
-
They were several inches shorter than the shelves, leaving a fair amount
of wasted space per shelf.
-
Surprisingly, the zippers are metal, and rust / get
stuck.
We
searched around some more, but couldn't find a good match among the
bags that could hold the 3700s. We prefer having the boxes flat in the bag (as
shown in the picture to the right), but just couldn't find a good
design. We decided to switch to the 3600 series boxes, which are shorter and
narrower, and found a few possibilities.
One
thing we wanted to avoid was a box that stored the 3600s vertically on one end,
like the bag pictured to the left. The reason is that when you store things
like flies or soft baits in boxes stored on end, they usually settle in
the bottom end of the box, 
and
everything get squished / warped / disheveled.
If these same boxes are stored on one side, like the box pictured to the right,
things work out OK, although you can still get hooks and other small items
migrating between compartments.
In the end, we wound up with a Cabela's Denny
Brauer Signature Series Magnum bag. Sizewise, it worked
out perfectly. Although designed to fit eight 3700 boxes on-end, it can
accomodate twelve 3600s laying on their sides, while leaving
room in the top of the bag for miscellaneous other items, such as a camera.
It has a ton of outside storage compartments for things like leader
spools, sunglass cases, etc. It has a hard waterproof bottom, a
water-resistant body, and a mesh map pocket on top. The zippers are not
waterproof, but it is reasonably water resistant. If caught in a
downpour, we would probably cover the bag in a plastic garbage bag, just
to be sure.
For boating
gear, we initially decided to break up our gear into three small bags:
one for a "Ditch Bag", one for extra clothes, and the third for general gear,
such as binoculars, fishing licenses and permits.
We tried several different solutions, looking for the right combination of
space and resistance to the elements. We originally started using these
Plano bags for clothes and general gear. The bag material is
waterproof, but the zipper is not. However, the zipper is covered by a large
storm flap, so these bags do a good job of keeping things dry.:
We selected the West Marine Clear Dry Bag pictured to the left
for the Ditch Bag. It is completely water-tight, and the clear sides make
locating thing easier.
The three bags
fit snugly on the seat of the console, on the bottom of the luggage rack.
However, the Plano bags turned out to be a little too long for the seat.
They hung out far enough in front to interfere with opening the front ice
chest, so we found a similar, shorter bag - the Bass Pro Shops
"Extreme" Boat Bag in small size (pictured to the right). These
bags appear to be constructed of the same material as the Planos, and the
zipper is also covered by a large storm flap.
These bags performed adequately, especially given the cost, and we continue to use them today. But the quality of some of the components leaves a bit to be desired. The pull tabs on the zippers are all gone now, and had to be replaced with parachute cord. On one of the bags, the black color from the cordura-covered plastic bottom tray bled onto the seat upholstery when it got wet! We tried to return the bag in question, and that's where we ran into the issue of Internet and brick-and-mortar stores not being the same, even when they are owned by the same company (see our article on Internet purchasing).
As for the ditch bag, we had to get rid of the West Marine Clear Dry Bag early on - the bag got punctured by a hook, and we were never able to get a good patch on the clear vinyl (probably just needed to try harder, but it's too late now!). Since we couldn't get the bag patched, we decided to forego the clear dry bag approach, and moved everything to another Bass Pro Shops Extreme Boat Bag.
After using the BPS Extreme Boat Bag for a season, we came to the
conclusion that having the extra clothes bag separate from the ditch bag didn't
make sense - if we got in trouble, we'd probably want everything together in
one bag, along with our car keys and cell phone. That's when we purchased the
larger West Marine Ditch Bag.
We moved all of the old Ditch Bag stuff into the new bag, along with our rain gear and boots. When we board the boat, we put our car keys, cell phone, and wallet in a ziplock plastic bag inside the Ditch Bag for safekeeping. This has us down to two bags in front - the Ditch Bag, and the boating gear bag.
A side note - you need to make sure you let your bags "breath" at the end of the day. Moist ocean air can get trapped inside, resulting in mildew. We typically unzip the bags and leave them open until the next time we go fishing.
For years, the standard was the aluminum Zero-Halliburton case. We're sure you've seen these sleek-looking cases around in airports. They're waterproof, gas-tight and tough. But they are also extremely expensive, the aluminum gets dented, and every thief in the world knows what's probably inside.
For these reasons, many people (us included) have shifted to cases
like the fiberglass / copolymer Pelicans. We bought a gray model years ago to transport our 35mm camera equipment, and have been extremely happy with it. The case does not have a lock, but it has sturdy latches and a hasp for adding your own padlock.
One thing that we have noticed is that none of these armored / waterproof cases make good "working" containers. That is, they're fine for protecting cameras enroute, but once you start working with the cameras, it is too difficult to get the equipment in and out of the case.
For example, we use a lot of fill flash. Since these cases are not sized to handle a camera with the flash attached, the flash has to be removed before the gear can go back into the case. It's a bit of a hassle to break apart / reassemble the camera and flash each time you need it.
What we've started doing is leaving the camera with flash attached in the top of the tackle bag, with the lid zipped shut. This protects the cameras from condensation and spray, but there is no protection against shock and vibration while running the boat.
Built-in tackle boxes
A lot of new boats come with tackle boxes built into the console or
some other bulkhead. The really trick ones use boxes like the Plano 3700s
or 3600s as the drawers, so you can switch tackle easily. We looked hard
at where we might be able to install one of these boxes in Toy Boat 2, but
could not find any place where there was enough rear clearance.
Gloveboxes & cubbies
For small items, you can purchase cubbies and glove boxes to install at
strategic locations. However, we had the same problem with these as we had with
the built-in tackle boxes. These might be able to be installed in
the gunnels, if the glovebox or cubbie is shallow enough, but we haven't
really come up with anything important that we would put in them. At
least, nothing important enough to warrant cutting a hole in the gunnel!
Swingback seats
Many center consoles come with swingback seats that have storage
underneath. We also looked at this option, but we needed the space for the
livewell.
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