I'm not a fisherman

timjet

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I bought a beautiful '19 Bennington 23SSBXP. The original owner had his dealer install a "power pole" shallow water anchor. I used it once, pretty slick but because it's installed on the deck and about 6' high it won't fit under my touchless boat cover. So I removed it. The only issue I have is I can't figure out how to get to the nuts that hold the bolts that hold the bracket to the deck. The aft 2 nuts are visible and I can get to them, but the remaining 4 I can't see. There is a metal cover place below the deck that rivited into position. Since it doesn't appear they have even been tampered with, I suspect the dealer installed it another way. Any ideas how to get to those nuts.
 

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Have you tried to remove the 4 bolts. Hopefully they are screwed into tapped holes.
TT
 
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Yes I did but the bolts simply turn and turn and don't loosen. I also suspect the nuts have plastic inserts.
There must be a way of getting to those nuts. Maybe the dealer did drill out the original rivets that attach the aluminum cover underneath the aft deck and was able to use the same holes and put new rivets back in, but that seems unlikely. So how did they access the area underneath the deck at the location of that bracket?
 
You need to drill out the rivets to get at the nuts to do it right or grind the bolts from the top as close to the floor deck and cover with same Colour silicone.
 
You need to drill out the rivets to get at the nuts to do it right or grind the bolts from the top as close to the floor deck and cover with same Colour silicone.
1. You could try pulling up on bolts and turning, possibly jamming the nut and allowing the bolt to be removed.
2. You could drill down through bolt and remove that way.
3. Cut them off.
4. Figure out how to get at it from below.
All will leave a little hole that needs work to conceal.
Once effort to figure out how they went in fails. I would go with pull method and if it that fails, cut them off.
To cover hole, see if you can get a couple sq inches of floor material and punch out same size hole to plug it in. Or put a grill on top of it all and start cooking burgers.
 
Drill a 2” hole through the under deck shield, centered under that plate. Use a universal joint extension and remove nuts. Cover hole with gorilla tape. No ones gonna see it from topside. Fill topside with almond/tan silicone. Make sure to melt/crazy glue the ends of seagrass at holes.
You might try a little CLR to clean the rust stains.
 
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