You may want to test how your boat floats with the batteries moved, I know I used to keep a spare battery in the floor compartment in the cabin sometimes and when I would put a fair amount of gear in there (like when we went to the Keys and I left it in the water for a week) the cockpit floor was sloped forward...no drainage when it rains.

Well holes were drilled and it looked ok...so I said go for it.

Cut a 12x7.5 inch hole in the area just forward of the cuddy bulkhead and
Bingo there is a perfect cavity for one battery maybe two if you wanted them on the same side. I’m going to cut the other side tomorrow and take some photos.

:sun::sun::beer:

Weight forward will have a greater effect on attitude than weight in stern.
Measure 2x...cut 1x.

Awesome! Good to know!

Truthfully, I still don't like the idea of putting batteries in the cuddy on the hull. That area takes the most pounding from a wave. It lifts up the highest and drops the furthest.... add something heavy on the inside of the hull in that area and you are asking for a cracked hull IMHO.

Remember that the hull is designed and braced to take an incoming soft (water) shock against it, not outgoing hard (solid) heavy weight shocks.

Physics tells us that a free falling object accelerates at 9.81 meters per second per second. (9.81m/s^2) So a 25 lb battery (11.33 KG) falling 2 feet (.6096m)
[Think of a 2 ft high chop] has the impact force of roughly 67.69 Joules or 49.93 Ft. Lbs. Put two batteries together and you have the equivalent of roughly 100 ft. lbs pounding on your hull in a 2 foot drop. More as the wave height height increases. And every wave causes that pounding.

The furthest I've gone forward is the area between the captains and the mates seats, and even then I tried to insulate the batteries from the hull itself with several inches of wood over foam that the batteries sit on. Just my two cents. :head:

Not Sure if this will work trying to post from my phone.

Cool, always wondered how deep it went there, even if it wasnt used for batteries nice to know you could put some hatches there.

The cavity runs the full length of the step down. I think Im going to try and build some fishing gear drew storage in front of where I cut the two holes.

Destroyer,
Im not going to lie I agree with you, and was thinking the same thing. I would have liked to have put them in between the the captains and passenger chair. My set up goes from stern forward live well, storage locker, fuel tank. I didnt have much choice where I could move them. Im going to add a bracket and wanted the weight forward, but couldnt impact the storage locker or fuel tank. Where its mostly a family boat my wife wants as much storage space as possible. I think what Im going to do is build a platform so it spreads the force over as much area as possible. I have some industrial rubber flooring Im going to fix to the bottom of the platform and then again on top of the platform under the battery. Hoping this off sets the pounding, since we are on the lake 90% of the time we just have to deal with boat produced chop.

Bradford, Ill take some better pictures with a measuring tape to give a better idea of the space.

I don't get the pictures The ones on the side in the cabin I understand that even though I wouldn't want my battery's sitting on the hull skin and the other pics with the two hatches I can't figure out where you cut them, so you have four hatches you cut?

No just the two holes. I tried to get a close up view to show how deep they are.