Hard sided duck boat blind

Does anyone have experience having one of these on their boats? I think I'm going to build one at some point later this summer. The thing I'm concerned with is how it will handle/affect the rest of the boat on windy days. It will be similar to the one on the bottom:

https://www.sw-marine.com/boat-blinds.html

I'm planning on doing it from either 3/4 or 1' aluminum square tubing and most likely reusing some aluminum roof panels for the sides. For perspective, i have a 1442 alweld flat bottom with a 23 hp go devil. Boat won't go super fast.

Materials will probably end up costing $4-500 or so bucks after I paint it. Possibly less if I use the old roof metal panels I have. I'm going to add a door on the bow that swings off to the side for visibility.

I will cover the outside with some type of wire mesh so I can attach grass mats or cane. Hopefully I'll able to make it removable just in case it doesn't do well on windier days. Whole thing should be relatively light with all of the aluminum.

there were some pretty decent YouTube videos on how to make a blind on a boat. I found them very informative.

Dr. B

With a surface drive motor, my biggest concern would be weight. They are slow enough already. I don't have any experience with a blind like that but would expect it to have significant wind resistance.

I've done it but too much to type here. Lower profile works better. We had one we decked over the top flat like a bass boat front and back... center section had a large hatch with 2 big wings on a piano hinge so they would fold out and make about the whole top of the boat flat..... like nearly completely decked over flat.

And put goose blinds on top....... and we killed more ducks out of it than any other boat setup we have tried. We welded some holes for spud poles and you could get that thing in some pretty short grass and the ducks could not see it unless they were directly overhead you could hide it real well. For divers we had a big grey cargo net we threw over it and you held a much lower profile to the water.... seemed to work better there too.

Do you remember how high the sides were? In order to sit and have the sides come up over the top of my head, they will need to be about 36" from the top of the gunwales total. My plan is for the sides to run 90 degrees from the top of the gunwales for about 22" and then at a 30 degree angle for about 20". I should end up with an overhead gap of around 20-24" that I haven't decided how I will cover.

Also, do you remember how it handled on windy days? I will be using it mainly in marsh edges and also open water if I can get it brushed like I want.

If you have any kind of wind, you better be anchored good or tied to a tree.

It’s also gonna make your engine burn more fuel for added weight and wind resistance.

Sorry, I meant to say that I'm more worried about running the boat while having the blind on top. I can't go much over 16-17mph with gear and another person.

I know. 36” above the gunwale is awfully high in proportion to a 42” beam. It’ll make it top heavy.

The beam is about 60" but bottom/floor is 42"

1442 would be wayyyy better off with a pop up scissor style blind with net material and a wind blocker!

I have done the soft blind thing and it's a pain. Granted, capsizing would also be a pain, but I'd much rather try to swing the hard blind if possible. Have you ever used one?

I did a hard sided blind like you are wanting to do.

The vertical sides were really short. The design went like this.... you are sitting in the blind on a 5 gallon bird bucket or whatever you want to sit on. When you stand up to shoot the whole blind hits you just above the waist so that you can swing and shoot freely even behind the boat. I build the wall behind your head slightly taller then the wall facing the decoys so that if it was raining you could scoot back under the lip behind you head a little bit to keep the rain off your head. Your legs and everything would still get wet but you got waders on so not a big deal. Just keeps the rain from running down your collar behind your neck. And presents a slot in front of your head to still view the decoys.

The whole thing was short. I ran a tiller steer so I put a boat seat on the back bench and made a box that raised it up a bit so that I could see over the front of the blind while driving. The other option was to move a side console with controls up to the front which I have seen that before as well.

We built the top with the same pitch as a standard roof, I do remember that it was short so we didn't need much pitch.and we left the front and rear decks open to help breakup the outline of the boat so that it didn't look square from overhead. If you do like what is in the link that is posted the whole thing will look like a big box from above. Really no better than a fabric blind looks. As for measurements that's been 25 years ago. If you sit in a chair and measure from your waist to just over your head that's about as tall as the whole thing was over top of the gunnels.

I put a big fake tree on the front deck. Laugh. It worked. I put one of those things that goes around a tree under a treestand what holds limbs. Put that around the motor. Installed some limbs to breakup the outline of the outboard. Laugh. It worked.

Then we moved to a totally flat decked over boat with goose blinds on top I added another fake tree on the decks, etc. Looked like 2 trees and a stump. Worked even better. Worked crazy good. It looked like an little island.

You need a wide boat to do this because you also need to consider having enough power. I think the hard sided blind we did was on an 18x60. So it was 60 in the floor. I am just not sure I would attempt this wan a 1442 and a 23hp Go Devil.

What do you think as far as safety concerns?

There were no safety concerns on a wide boat. I probably would go with something real short on a narrow boat a 42 inch bottom isn't real wide. You could probably get away with a permanent frame but to skin it with aluminum adds some weight you just can't get around it. Whatever you use to skin the hard blind you are basically taking nearly 2 boats and sandwiching them in terms of the amount of material. A 23hp mud motor is going to struggle if you load it. Also a concern. You might be able to change the prop pitch I think I did that once on a longtail Go-Devil but I haven't messed with mud motors in a long time.

You might want to design it and get a rough estimate of how much you think it will weigh. Add that to the boat and then also add all your regular gear into the boat as well.... and see how it does.