This time around, wanting something a little more stable under me, I decided to use a pedestal built by Trevor Soileau. Called Mad Dog, I have used the hip blocks in my previous boat and really liked them. At Nationals last year, I looked at his new pedestal installed in his own boat and was impressed with how clean and solid it was. These pictures and intallation instructions should be used in conjunction with Trevor's own installation page to get a good idea of how to install one of these.

Trevor, at my request, cut the pedestal to 4.5 inches. Sitting on nothing but carbon did not sound very comfortable, so I wanted to put a 1/2 inch sheet of foam on top for a little padding. Wanting my total height to be around 4.5 inches, I cut another 1/2 inch off the bottom with a cutting wheel on my dremel. Although Trevor recommends notching the back of the pedestal to accommodate the rear pillar, I looked at the styrofoam pillar, then at the carbon pedestal, and cut the styrofoam. It is softer and much easier to cut. Although I do not have pictures of it, I also secured the pillar with small patches of kevlar to the back of the pedestal to further stabilize the pillar.

To secure the pedestal, I did not want any rubbing to be possible between the hull and the bottom edge of the pedestal. Even a small amount of rubbing could go straight into the foamcore before I know it. Trevor's instructions show securing the bottom edge with seam tape. My plan was to use a thick microbead mixture to initially secure the bottom edge, then reinforce it with seam tape.

Once the seat was secured, it did not even come close to reaching the top deck, so to tighten everything up, I glued in a block of foam to close this gap.

Following this, I cut a piece of foam from 3/4" in the middle to 1" on the sides for the behind me and glued this in. At the bottom it was tapered to mate with the 1/2" to be glued to the horizontal surface.

After letting the back foam dry enough to stay in place, I then glued a piece of 1/2" foam for under me, just enough to pad my scrawny behind. This was also tapered at the back edge to mate with the vertical foam already glued on.

Finally, everything was simply trimmed around the edges to clean it up. For this I used an electric breadknife, a very useful tool for shaping foam.