[Destroyer]

Hi Coz. Glad to see you finally made it. Welcome aboard.

You have some really interesting things there.

It even came with the shop manual, the receipts when the boat was originally purchased, all of the books that came with it originally.

That may be unique to this site. If you ever get the chance, Could you please make a copy of the manual and post it to this site so it won't be lost to posterity?

This is just a guess, but I think the poles on the sides are for support of a crossbar that held a reel that the net was wrapped around. The netter would stand on the rear deck, the reel would winch in the net and the fish would be dragged up onto that deck where they would be removed. Anyways, that's just my theory based on how I see things arraigned on the boat. But you can see that the PO was a practical man not interested in looks, just function. And as Engineers all know, form follows function. He needed radar.. up went the mast. Wanted shade, up went his version of a bimini. Needed a place to land the fish.. rear deck. Way to haul in hundreds of pounds of fish and a place to store the net..? Put up a reel. See? Anyways, that's my fantasy of how he placed things and why.

As to the radar mast, you can put up an arch or switch out that 2x4 for a Fiberglass or Stainless Steel pole. If it were me I'd go with some form of an arch.