On Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 2:59:53 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 00:48:19 -0500, Califbill billnews wrote:

wrote:

The good Bennington looks OK (that may be the G not the S) but it
really comes down to how they are built. I am tough on them.
That is why that commercial grade boat looks so good to me.

Maybe buy the toons and buy an aluminum welder and weld up a deck frame.
Add enough supports to use a composite deck.

The deck frame is usually bolted to the toons but you need to get the
tubes that have good supports. That is the biggest flaw in the cheap
ones. My boat has 2x2 square tube for the stringers instead of the "Z"
or "C" channel most boats use and everything is through bolted with
3/8" 316 SS hardware.

It seems you are just poking around in the mangroves. The square tubing gives you slightly better dimension stability for fast running over rough stuff. Why does that matter?

Composites are really pretty heavy. Plywood seems to be the best deck.
It gives you a whole lot of dimensional stability and if you get the
right grade, it lasts a long time. Mine is 25 years old (MDO) and
still doing well.
The trick is sealing the edges and all penetrations well.
There are boats with aluminum decking bit they tend to be noisy.

And the aluminum decked boats are "flexy". You can see them twisting at speed in the rough. I have to say my Premier is rock solid even when the lake gets very rough, and I've been in Charleston Harbor when it was fairly nasty with no ill effects.