Intro
Our original swim ladder looked pretty tired, with faded, cracking steps, and some old twine holding it up. It really needed some TLC, but when a friend tried to climb up it, and the step spun out from under them, we knew we had to move it up the priority list before the next summer swimming season.
Removal
Getting the ladder off was not too bad. To make things easier, we backed into the slip. Then, with Susan on the dock with a large screwdriver, and Matt in the lazarette with a socket wrench, it was just a matter of removing the 6 bolts.
Once the ladder was back in the garage, I was able to remove the old steps and clean up the frame with Barkeeper’s Friend.
Parts
The old steps were held on with stainless straps, but they were bent and one set was not even the right size. I ordered new straps from McMaster’s-Carr. The ones for most of steps were for 1″ tubing, and for the top step, I also added a set up 1.25″ straps for the larger tubing.
I decided to use Starboard for this project. I had some left over from the princess seat project, and it already has a textured surface to help with traction.
For the bolts, I got some with rounded tops and a hex slot that would be easy to tighten and no sharp edges.
New steps
I made new steps out of the Starboard. You can work it just like wood. I cut new steps to the right sizes, drilled the bolt holes and routed them to have nice round edges.
The original ladder did not have a stop on the bottom rung, so I added that. Also, the original top step was very small so I made one that was quite a bit larger to make it easier to balance when climbing over the rail.
This top step is held on with two sets of straps to keep it from rotating, but this meant that it had bolt heads all over it, so I counter-sunk those to make it nicer for bare feet. The other steps had the bolts out at the edges, so I didn’t think they really needed to be recessed.
Reinstall
With the boat already backed in, reinstallation was pretty straight-forward.
For the bolts that hold the frame to the boat, I got new ones with hex heads so we could use a wrench instead of a screwdriver. This made it much easier to get good torque on them. I also used new washers and nylock nuts.
I put a little butyl tape around the bolts, held the frame in place, and inserted them into the holes. It took a bit of tapping to get them to go in far enough that I could get the washers and nuts on inside. The Susan held a box wrench to each one from the dock, while lightly tightened each one from the lazarette. Once all were snug, we went back to each one to tighten it all the way.
The final result looks really nice and should be much safer.
Transom steps
After replacing the wooden ladder steps with white plastic, the wooden transom steps looked out of place and were also in pretty bad shape. We replaced those with white plastic as well.
