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So I know this isn't the big boats that usually get posted around here, but it's my first boat, and I'm pretty damn excited to be on the water this summer in something that's not a rental. After a few years of family vacations to LOTO and Table Rock, I decided I wanted a boat of my own. I wasn't willing to finance a toy, so something big and nice was out of the question. Back in January, I found a guy willing to trade his Manta Ray for a couple of guns I had about $800 in. My buddy and I drove down to Wichita from Kansas City, and towed her home.

Here she was 10 minutes after picking her up.



She's a 1993 Manta Ray 189. 18'9" Bowrider, with 3.0 4 cylinder and an OMC Cobra drive. Not going to win any races, but she'll fit the whole family and be easy on gas. We knew we were going to be in for a project, but were fine with that, because we a 1 year old, we don't really do a whole lot of anything else, so we thought it would be something fun for the family to work on together.

Here's the first weekend of work, and more pictures of the sorry shape she was in. The seats and pretty much entire interior was trash, but the previous owner installed a new floor 2 years ago, the hull is solid, and the motor and drive work the way they're supposed to, so we figured we had a good base to refresh.

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More from the first weekend. As you can tell, she was rode hard and put away wet for a long time. Guy we got her from had started the restoration, but lost interest as he had several other boats. Notice the awesome CARPET used to cover half the seats. :facepalm:

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After the first weekend of work, we had all of the seats and engine cover removed, and taken back home to be rebuilt if possible, and replaced if not.

Notice all the awesome screw holes through the fiberglass where the previous dips*** screwed the seats back in after covering them with carpet.

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After we got the seats down to bare wood, we determined we would be able to save about half of them, and the other have would need to be replaced. Here we are scrapping, sanding, Kilzing, and painting.

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For the seats that were unable to be saved, we got a sheet of marine ply from home depot, and made them.

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The next step was to glue foam back onto the seat frames. Some of the foam was able to be reused. The foam that had to be trashed was replaced by some 3" high density we picked up at a surplus store in Wichita for $18 a yard.

New foam.





Reusing old foam, and bolstering with some new 1/2" as needed.

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The next step was putting vinyl back on our seats. Since our hull is teal and white, we decided to go with the same color scheme for the seats. We purchased the white vinyl off of eBay for $8 a yard, and got the teal from JoAnn fabric for $10 a yard, making use of a 50% off cut fabric coupon.

Here is the sewing station we set up in our basement.








We started with all the seats and backrest that would just use one piece of vinyl, as they would be the easiest.

Here are the first 3 we finished, the seats for the open bow.

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The next project we tackled was the backrest. This was going to be the most challenging piece to upholster, as it is 3 dimensional, and we also incorporated a teal stripe that would run across the engine cover, down the backrest, and on to the real bench, so our measurements and sewing had to be spot on. This part sucked.











Original vinyl next to the new. I think our design is a bit less dated then the original 90s ALL THE TEAL look.

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After a lot of cursing and long nights, we finally had all the seats done! Here's our finished results!!

My lady modeling the rear bench and backrest.



Our son inspecting some leftover foam.



The engine cover/sun pad



All of them together (sun pad wasn't finished yet in this picture)

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Last weekend, we got more done. We were able to run the motor on the hose for the first time. Oil pressure and temp were both great, but she needs a carb rebuild, as we couldn't get it to idle well, and it was leaking in a few places. It's just a 2 barrel Holley, so the kit was cheap, and the rebuild should be a piece of cake.

We also cleaned all the years of crud out of the interior, and started mocking up the new seats for fitment.








I can get used to this....



My buddy testing the bench.