Adding Rod holders and rod holder drains.

[FSH 210 Sport]

I added three zero degree rod holders, two were mounted 12” forward from the forward most 30° OEM rod holders, and the third was mounted in the transom behind the helm seat. These 0° rod holders I bought from Yamaha as the two OEM transom mounted rod holders are 0°







Interestingly there is a spot in the center of the transom where the non skid changes to smooth and it appears this space was intended for a 0° rod holder.



So, the reader has obviously noticed the chinger in the gel coat, and it’s circular shape, this was caused by a hail stone and will get repaired later this season when it is warmer. There was actually a void between the gel coat and the fiberglass.

The forward two 0° Rod holders are for rod riggers. I bought five Shimano Talora trolling rods, three 9’ and two 8’, two of the 9’ rods will be for these rod riggers and that gives a roughly 26’ spread on those lines. The transom center mounted 0° rod holder will use the third 9’ pole, and the two 8’ rods will be used in the aft most OEM 30° rod holders. We tested this set up last weekend and that spread works very well.

With this set up it is possible to put out another two rods in the forward most OEM rod holders for trolling, or to use my down riggers. Using the down riggers as well as different depth lures and line lengths will be a great way to cover a lot of water and depths!

Another thing I wanted to address was the fact that only the two forward most OEM rod holders had drains on them. All the other rod holders would drain any water that got in them into the bilge, in the case of two rod holders aft that are above the the aft storage compartments, any water that got into those two would end up in the storage compartments. I was scratching my head for quite some time trying to figure out where that water was coming in at, especially after one of my automatic inflatable life vests deployed in the compartment. One day I just happened to look down one of those aft rod holders and realized it went straight through.

In my search for thru hull fittings for my other projects I came across some universal rod holder drains on T-H Marines website.






With these in hand I set about setting up rod holder drains for all of the remaining rod holders. The rod holders above the aft storage compartments were easy, the rest, not so much. There is no way to get to the underside of all the other rod holders, so, you have to tie in the drain hoses from the top, to say this was difficult is an understatement. It took numerous attempts at putting them together to get the hose lengths right so that hopefully they will drain correctly. On final assembly I also sealed up the bases of the rod holders and cup holders with 4200.

Oh, the cup holders in the transom did not have drains hoses either, just like the cup holders furthest forward in the bow, those two cup holders forward would drain their water into the under seat storage in the bow, WTH? Those two forward cup holders got their drains capped off and I just use a rag to remove the water after washing.

This picture shows the forward port storage pod with the OEM 30° rod holder on the left, the new 0° rod holder I added with the universal rod holder drain and the cup holder.




This is the starboard side aft storage compartment, the vertical clear tube is coming from the oem rod holder directly above, the clear tube on the right is coming from the other rod / cup holders on the starboard side including the new 0° rod holder in the transom. As you can tell these rod holder drains are tied into the new deck drains I installed. I used a 1.5” barbed splice, drilled a hole in the top of the splice and installed a 1/8th NPT / 3/8” barbed fitting.



This is the port side aft storage compartment with the same set up as the starboard side. This side was a little easier since I could see the rod holders from the bottom.



These rod holder / cup holder drains were a major pita to install but I do believe the juice is worth the squeeze. I should have dry storage compartments from here on out!

I would suggest to my bow rider brethren that if you have mystery water getting into compartments, check the cup holders to see if they have drains hooked up to them, if they don’t you can either run 3/8” tubing to the bilge or just cap them off and remove any accumulated water with a rag / microfiber towel.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Small update that took a while to complete, I know I posted this in another thread but accidentally clicked in this link just now and thought I’d update this drain re route here for symmetry.

I had thought from the beginning why these drains were not run closer to the hull, there’s a lot of space taken up by these hoses swooping around in these storage compartments. So with the recent acquisition of a Lakewood tackle center the drain re route got pushed up the priority list to make room for it. As a fyi, 3/4” PEX fittings work well with 5/8” hose, for drain line purposes anyway. I used 3/4” pex 90’s to attach to the 5/8” OEM thru hull drain which is far too long and sticks into the compartment too far, much shorter stainless thru hulls may make their way into these drains later this year.

In the post above you can see that the 5/8” hose came into the compartment so far that the rod tips ran between the hose and the hull, now that 5/8” hose is on the hull side of the rod tip. I re used the oem 5/8” x 3/8” T fitting to attach the 0° rod holder and cup holder drain, the used a 1/2” NPT threaded to 3/8” barbed nipple fitting to attach the oem 30° rod holder drain to, I was just going to block that off and use another 3/8” T but sitting there in front of the bins at the hardware store I thought why not use that other 5/8” opening to speed up the drain flow.

 

[MilesPrower]

Just saw this thread for the first time today. Great work!!!

On my AR210 (before I sold it) and now on my 255 FSH, I use the table stanchion as a vertical rod holder in the back. The table stanchion goes into the aft clamp, just like you're mounting the table for use at the swim deck... but leave the table surface off.

I slid a PVC pipe into the table stanchion to use as a liner. I can't remember the size of the pipe, but the pipe fit perfectly, and it doesn't interfere with actual table use.