Fishing Reports

Restoration of “AWESOME” Part II – the Fighting Chair

Hello from Cebaco Bay

This is Part II in the series following the restoration of the Bertram 31‘ that had been ‘abandoned’ in the Diablo Spinning Club on the banks of the Panama Canal.

We found that the fighting chair was larger than most of it’s era for that size of boat. The chair had a fibreglass seat and had teak foot board, arms and backrest. It was manufactured by Lee’s Tackle Inc. of Miami, the same town as Bertram Yachts, and bore the logo with ‘Lee’s’ written on the body of a fish.

By visiting Lee’s website we learned that we have the ‘Classic Style‘ ‘Large Tuna Chair’. The large tuna chair has five horizontal members to the backrest. The chair can be seen at http://www.leetackle.com/classic.html , except ours combines a fibreglass seat with armrests of teak.

The metalwork has been polished and there is very minimal pitting and faulting to the original shiny stainless steel.

The varnish is a special “Captain’s Varnish” which has a high resistance to the strong Panamanian sun and the other weather elements encountered off-shore. It costs $64 for a quart and the restoration team will be putting 9 layers of this brushed on and then sanded, with a 10th layer added by spray-gun.

This last photo is of the chair reassembled for a photograph, it has not yet received all of it’s varnish layers, and there is one of the steel parts missing that controls the angle of the back. We have been in touch with Lee’s Tackle for help in locating this part (you can see the part missing on the view of the under-side of the chair). If you know the whereabouts of a spare one of these, then please let us know. If we don’t find a solution very soon we will have to make one.