Whether you’re refurbishing an older boat or simply want to make better use of the space available on your vessel, updating the seating arrangements can go a long way towards a new look and better functionality.
Lounge Seats
Back-to-back lounge seats have been around for as long as we can remember. Lounge seats consist of two seats—one facing forward and one facing aft—sitting atop a rectangular box (base). A reclining mechanism connects the two seats to each other and to the base.
Lounge seats stay upright during boat rides, and become a place to catch some rays when the boat’s stationary. To recline the seats, lift up the bottom cushions and pull the away from the seat base. The seat backs will drop into place on top of the seat base, making a marginally comfortable sun lounge.
As an added bonus, you can hide stuff in the seat base—a real benefit on smaller boats.
Swingback Seats
The swingback cooler seat is a marvelous innovation. Essentially, a swingback seat is a large ice chest with a padded lid and a built-in backrest that’s hinged at the bottom, allowing you to sit on top of the cooler facing forward when underway, then you can swing the backrest the other way to face aft for fishing.
The seat’s base—the cooler—is easy to remove and to put back in place.
Adding a swingback seat to your center console boat or pontoon boat is an excellent use of limited floor space.
We’d put one of these seats in our boat any day.
Pedestal Seats
Let’s say there’s a place on your boat where sometimes you need a seat, and other times you don’t—so a permanently mounted seat’s out of the question—what can you do? We think pedestal seats might be the answer.
A pedestal seat is made up of three parts:
- The base—located on the boat’s deck, often is a circular plate with a hole in the center
- The pedestal—a cylindrical tube that rests securely in the center hole of the base
- The seat—a single seat that fits on top of the pedestal
Many boats have several pedestal bases on the deck, but just a few pedestal seats to go in them. For example, a fishing boat may have six bases—and only two pedestal seats in the boat, leaving plenty of deck space for fighting fish. If you want to bring more fishing partners, just add more pedestal seats.
Tables
After being on the water a while, we tend to get hungry and thirsty. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place to eat—a table, maybe? Not a problem.
One of the benefits of using pedestal seats is that the same base that holds your fishing chair can often be used to secure a removable table. Just like a pedestal seat, you can put the table up for fine dining, and stow it out of the way to conserve deck area.
The removable table concept is very popular on deck boats and pontoon boats, where entertaining might be a higher priority than fishing. We personally like having a table on board—it gives us a place to rest our elbows during meals.