New Member & My CM23

[nolaboater99]

Hi All,

I am the owner, for the second time, of a 1985 Cobalt CM23. I owned this boat with a partner from 1989-1998 when I got out but I bought it back 2 1/2 years ago. It was painted about 12 years ago by my old partner. This boat lived the first 28 years of it's life in the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, CA. When I got it, it was not in the best condition having been fairly neglected by the previous owner. Here are a couple of pics taken about 3 years ago in Long Beach.

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In 2016 I retired and my wife and I moved from Cal to the New Orleans area. I had the boat shipped there and I have been doing a Restoration/modification which is nearing completion. I have pulled most everything from the boat and I have had to remake all of the interior cabinets and bulkheads as they had been wet and deteriorated.

The CM23 was only produced from 1983-1985 with a total of 84 boats made. In 1985 Cobalt only made 15 of them and my serial number is 0015 making it the last CM23 ever produced. I have been posting pics of the progress of my work on a couple of other Forums and I may do that here as well.

Shawn

[Ytmsn]

Awesome story nola and Welcome! Let's see lots more pics of that cool boat!

[cmattj]

Welcome from the California delta Nola.. that " schoolin is artwork. So I take she's back in salt again?

Love to here more about her.. engine .. drives.. interior looks like a facing back seat.. very cool!

[Big Block Power]

Welcome from Wisconsin.
Um yea we want to see those pictures.

[Bobo87]

Nice job nolaboater99. Love that city. Tons do and the food is amazing. Be sure and hit Dr. John’s Steak house and get the truffle butter. You won’t regret it.

[AsLan7]

She is gorgeous nolaboater99! Great to see some vintage cobalt owners here. Helps to balance things out.

Like Matt said, it is a real artform to do what you’re doing.

Please keep posting about your journey. You’ll have many followers here with our enthusiasm for this Cobalt passion. (& it helps to get us through the winter months )

...And welcome aboard mate!.

[thunder550]

Hey Shawn, nice to see you over here These folks LOVE pictures, and I'm betting they would drool over the restoration pics you've been posting on the other site. You've made some nice improvements to that boat! Let's see the rest of those pics

[jhnmdahl]

Love seeing the classics taken care of - thanks for sharing it with us!

[nolaboater99]

I'm happy to provide more info but I have to admit....I feel like I'm cheating on my wife. I am one of two Administrators for ClubCobalt.net. This is another Cobalt Forum that was started last year. But whatever....

I was chronicling this project on another forum over about a year so I'll try and condense it down some. As I said on another thread, the boat is a 1985 CM23. The CM stands for Center Mount referencing the location of the engine. I bought this boat with a partner in Long Beach, CA in 1989. For me, it was love at first sight. My partner owned a restaurant on the water in Long Beach and traded free food for a free slip at someone's home. That was his contribution....I did all the maintenance and upkeep. I exited the partnership in 1998 and relocated to Las Vegas.

After looking unsuccessfully for a CM23 for a number of years the guy my partner sold the boat to contacted me 3 years ago stating it was for sale. It had a bad starter so it was not running but knowing the boat and letting emotion cloud my judgement, I agreed to the $3500 price (mistake #1 of many) and drove the 6 hours from Sacramento to Long Beach to get it on a Friday to bring it back the next day. Until that day the boat had spent its entire life (28 years) in salt water. I knew there was a trailer but I had not seen it in years. It was a 1996 Pacific and had only been used less than a dozen times but I was not prepared for the condition it was in. Unfortunately, the few times it was used it was dunked in salt water, never rinsed and just put back in the storage lot. Before I could even try and put the boat on it I had to: put on new tail lights, all new wiring, replace the winch cable, replace some missing lug nuts and buy 4 new tires, and all but the tires I'm doing in a West Marine parking lot. After I finally got the boat on the trailer and started towing, it became obvious that the wheel bearings were bad and probably the brakes as well. I could not find anyplace to get the bearings done on a Sunday so I put the boat and trailer back in the storage lot where the trailer had been and drove back North empty-handed.

Ten days later I was back with a floor jack and the tools to take a wheel off and at least see what I was working with. It was not good so I found a shop to replace all wheel bearings and I just disconnected the brakes and towed it, without incident, back to Sacramento. I should mention here that in the 10 days between trips south, my job of 9 years was eliminated, along with a few others, and at 64 years of age I found myself unemployed....and I had committed to this project unsure where the money was going to come from to do it.

I'll condense this a bit from my other post. Along with what I've mentioned above I found a bad starter, blown head gasket, poorly seated exhaust manifold and along with repairing all of that I have rebuilt the cab and had valves, seats and guides. As I said, CM stood for "Center Mount" referring to the location of the motor. It has what Mercruiser calls a "Jackshaft" model. The driveshaft runs from the engine and connects to the Alpha I drive but in my case I have an SEI 106 drive. Here is where the motor sits

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Someone mentioned the back-to-back seat. The motor cover holds the 2-person, back-to-back helm seat. Mine is currently out but here is a pick of an earlier model CM showing the seating arrangement.

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If you look to the right in the picture you can just make out the teak Walk-around in a recessed portion of the deck. This was a feature of the Cobalt "C Series" boats and it goes around the perimeter of the boats. It's about 4" wide and has the black grippy rubber crap found on teak deck of larger cruisers. I always hated it as it was hard t make it look good. So....I dug it all out and replaced it with strips of rock maple going for a teak & holly look. Below is prior to finishing and after 5 coats of Minwax Spar Satin Urethane.

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[nolaboater99]

Sorry....I think I overloaded the last post. Anyway here is the finished walk-around.

Finished Teak 2.JPG

This boat sat uncovered in a marina and rain water was allowed to fill the bilge. I'm not sure how long it sat like that but I was concerned about the stringer and transom wood integrity. I had the boat surveyed and surprisingly nothing was wet where it wasn't supposed to be. Further research revealed that even back then Cobalt built their stringer components, coated them with resin and then installed and glassed them into the hull. How many manufacturers did that back then. However, even though the drive was new the gimbal housing was sho and when I was removing the hinge pins the metal crumbled in my hand. So I found a 1990 gimbal housing complete with trim cylinders, power steering cylinder and even a new gimbal bearing for $200 bucks.

About this time, I retired and my wife and I relocated to the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain in the New Orleans area. I labeled and packed up all the pieces and parts and contracted with U-Ship to tow the boat to Covington, LA.

Over the past 30 years the wiring in the boat had been added to, disconnected, butchered....well you get the picture. So armed with the original Cobalt wiring diagram, ABYC wiring color code protocol as well as Mercruiser's, I began rewiring the boat as well as the helm. The switchgear had to go so I cut out the 1 toggle switches, breakers and indicator lights.

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And replaced it with this

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Continued next post....

[nolaboater99]

Apparently I can only load 3 pics per post. Sorry....

The instrument panel and the that lower switch panel are both 1/8" aluminum plate that was originally anodized black. Over the years it had faded and the lower portion of the upper panel had many holes in it. Rather than try and fabricate something new I painted the aluminum a black hammer finish and covered the Swiss cheese part with 3/32" ABS plastic with a wrinkle finish. I then added the stripes and the logo. I was going to go with a set of gauges that were identical to the original but I stumbled upon a set of NOS Faria gauges including a matching depth gauge. Lastly, I like clean, uncluttered panels and so I flush-mounted a 5" SIMRAD GO5 GPS/Chartplotter. This thing is pretty cool. It has full touch screen technology, Wi-Fi capability for downloading charts, built-in GPS antenna, accepts C-Map, Navionics and other formats and the installation was a breeze....just 3 wires.

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So at this point I have ordered vinyl for the new interior, will be installing carpet this weekend and continuing to refinish teak....there is lots of teak in these old babies. My birthday is April 14th and I plan to be on the water that day.

That brings you up to date and I will post more as I progress.

Shawn

[Driller]

Welcome from Texas NOLA. Great photos of a great boat and restoration.

[AsLan7]

Nice work NB99 --and nice choice of materials for that professional look.
And that edge striping really sets it apart too.

The SIMRAD is a great addition. It's really like a Cobalt resto-mod....making it better than the original!

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[thunder550]

Can't wait to see you finish putting her back together Am I remembering correctly that you're going with a more modern design with the new vinyl?

I felt like I was cheating too when I first came over here, you guys were awesome about talking me through the purchase process. Nothing wrong with being on multiple forums though, so don't sweat it.

[AsLan7]

I felt like I was cheating too when I first came over here, you guys were awesome about talking me through the purchase process. Nothing wrong with being on multiple forums though, so don't sweat it.

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Dual hatted, T550.... I like it!
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