Campjon Surgery
by Adam Abrego

Hi folks. It’s been a couple years since last I wrote about my Campjon. I got a couple nice seasons out of the boat, and to Jim Michalak’s credit, the boat worked just as advertised. Only a couple small problems: I never camped on it, and my kids wanted a place to sun themselves. So this year, we decided to do some surgery on ‘AJA’.

Here is where we started:

For those of you who recall my original article on her, I had raised the roof on the cuddy six inches to get more head room, which is why she looks a bit awkward compared to Luke Spreadborough’s prototype.

As a result of many discussions with my daughters we decided to cut the cuddy sides off and build benches in the old cabin area that could be used for tanning purposes. I broke out the saw and cut the cabin down to the gunwales. Here’s how it went:

First Cut

Second cut

Benches installed

Fernando the Chihuahua jumping out of the boat ;-)

So what I have now is basically an extra deep jon boat which is now an adequate tanning platform for two teenage girls. The only draw back is that the boat is a bit wetter now than it was before. I’ve pushed the boat pretty hard and haven’t noticed any twisting so it doesn’t seem to have hurt it any removing the cuddy. Forward visibility has been greatly improved.

Surgery was successful and the patient survived!