Leaning Post shock-absorbing pedestal seat by Seaspension

Tired of your leaning post seating making you dread sitting down? When you see an oncoming wave do you lift your bottom off the leaning post bench, grab the Oh' Shit handles tight and squint? Wish you had a soft comfortable seat for that ride home after a long day of boating? Seaspension leaning post systems incorporate shock absorbing pedestals into the leaning post bench (dual post), or into a single stand alone seat, and even in a tripod leaning post configuration.

Not all boat leaning posts are created equally, and without Seaspension's leaning post shock-absorbing pedestals, well it's just a leaning post that will make your chiropractor very happy after a long boating career!  The LEANING POST SHOCK ABSORBING BOAT BENCH SEAT by SEASPENSION is the softest ride you can dream of!

Seaspension's shock absorbing leaning post pedestals have a shock travel of 3 ½ inches for optimal performance when paired with any boat leaning post.  The leaning post shock-absorber has a stainless steel progressively rated coil-over spring and has proprietary valving for both compression and rebound strokes when the leaning post compresses down. That means that the initial compression is relatively soft and gets progressively stiffer as the leaning post compresses harder. The damper valve senses the speed by which the leaning post shock absorber compresses, so it can do its job properly. The Seaspension leaning post shock-absorber system produces No Pogo stick reaction, thus giving you the best ride possible from any leaning post system.  

The bench seat shown to the left (front and rear view) was designed for Florida Inshore Angler.com for our Project Osprey Boat Build.  What I really like about this seat, beyond the shock absorbing pedestals of course, are several things.  First, the "lean to" function of the roll pads allows one to stand up and create more leg room while at the helm, while also allowing you to rest against and share your weight on the pad and still get the benefits of the shock absorbing pedestals.  Second, the back of the bench seat padding is curved around your butt, and also in an upward fashion, thus giving you a very comfortable and secure seat that wraps around your curvatures just enough to firmly hold you in place without restricting your movement.  Third, the back rest of the bench seat also wraps around a bit to hold you in place. 

The install of the Seaspension seat was straight forward and simple.  Being that I rebuilt the entire deck, I planned ahead by laminating in a 3/4 inch ply below the deck, and overlaid with 1708 glass to ensure a strong base to bolt the seat on. This gives me 1 1/2 inches of  wood, plus epoxy laminated between the two, and a layer of glass as shown to the far left of the image showing the underside of the deck. 

I'm sure this wasn't a necessary step, but I run my boat pretty hard and just feel better having more material at the base.  I've seen seats on many boats become loose over a period of time, and the holes always become enlarged from the constant pressure placed on the bolts from all angles.  Rather than screwing the SeaSpension seat to the deck with screws, I decided to thru-bolt using large fender washers and lock nuts on the underside.  The pedestals have a very sturdy base with 6 pre-drilled holes on each.  To add additional strength, as well as to seal the holes, I ran a bead of 5200 around the base before bolting it down.  Once I cranked the bolts tight, this beauty was as solid as a rock with no wiggle or flimsy feeling whatsoever.  The seat is very heavy, and my guess would be around 80-100 pounds with pedestals attached.    

I was eager to test the Seaspension seat and wanted to get the boat in some nasty waves, but had to settle for two foot Gulf chop, which is nothing to laugh at, as it's like being in a washing machine unable to predict when you're going to launch or get T-Boned until the last second.  I weigh 180 pounds, and my buddy Reggie weighs in at a good 250, thus creating an unbalanced load that was perfect to see how the suspension performed across the seat.  With 430 pounds on the seat, I was determined on giving the seat a workout.  I got the boat up to about 25 mph and the seat kept us riding comfortable, but the hull wasn't coming out of the water enough to really get any significant jolts, so I bumped her up to 40 and took to the air!   Before sitting down I ran her a little distance to see what the conditions would be like at 40 mph, and about 2/3rds of the hull was out of the water consistently, enough to keep my knees bent and eyes peeled to the water in anticipation.  Now and then we even got a few prop growls.    

I blessed the seat with mine, and instinctively my feet wanted to reach for the deck, and I cringed a bit waiting to take the jolt I anticipated was coming.   We hit a few waves that barked the prop and slammed the hull into the next wave, and never felt more than my own weight going vertical and compressing on the seat.  I could feel Reggie's side of the seat compressing lower than my side, but it never effected my stability or the performance of my side.  The shocks are independent of one another, and the seat brackets allow movement without binding, thus creating a very well designed seating system that had both of us smiling and praising the seat.   The test would soon to be just the foreplay in my relationship with the Seaspension seat.  She wanted more, and I do like to please!

Several weeks later I took her 50 miles offshore and got caught with my pants down, so to speak!  Mother Nature wanted a turn, and she was the one doing the pounding.  The weather report was way off, and the winds turned out of the North Northeast and stayed rather than turning West as per the weather report.  When you're 50 miles offshore in the summer, you never want your wind direction from land, as a storm coming from land will trap you.  The storms rolled in and the swell went from .5 to 2 foot in about 1/2 hour, then grew to 3 foot as we decided to head back to shore.  Within 20 minutes we caught 15 knot winds and solid 5 footers with an occasional 5 plus mixed in.   The only thing positive about the conditions was the intervals of 6 seconds that allowed me to tack.  I ran about 5 miles East Southeast which allowed me to surf between the waves and eliminate a lot of the pounding, but tacking back East Northeast was nearly a direct assault into the waves.  If ever there were a time to test the seat it was this trip. 

  The sea was slapping us in the face every 10 seconds with several hundred gallons of water,  but my buddy managed to snap off a pic as we launched.  On a calm day this is an hour and a half trip, but today we knew it was going to be much longer.    Although I wasn't able to sit because I had to work the throttle constantly and keep a close eye on the waves, I was able to use the lean to function of the Seaspension seat by lifting the roll pad back onto the seat and leaning my weight on it.  Within seconds of getting onto a plane and running around 23 mph I caught air and slammed hard, hard enough to make everyone yell out "holy shit!"  I took some jolt on that one, but not nearly what I would have fully standing. 

As we continued to slam hard and often, I shifted more weight onto the seat until I realized that angling my feet up onto the console where it meets the deck while pushing back into the seat took away all of the hard jolts, and I mean all of them.  I kept an eye on my buddy sitting next to me, and within 30 seconds of getting beat down by the waves he had both feet off the deck and let the seat do the work.  The third guy was laid up in the back on a bean bag feeling no pain, but the 4th guy was standing next to the console getting a good leg workout.  Three of us came back feeling good, and one did not!

Between the slow compression of the cushion and the shocks, this seat removes those bone jarring jolts that put your kidneys in your pocket and your spine on the deck.  It took us about 3 hours to make it back to John's pass in solid 5 footers, but all my body parts were in check and I did not feel like I just pounded my way in from 50 mile in 5 footers, other than a very sore wrist, locked up fingers, and a belly full of seawater. 

The real results come the following day.  Anyone that fishes offshore knows the pains that come on after the trip.  Until I got the Seaspension seat I would have been stiff as a board the following day even running in 2 foot seas.  Not this time.  Not a single stiff joint.  No sore kidneys or spine.  Absolutely nothing.  If you fish offshore this seat is a must.  I've only got about 15 trips on the seat to date, and I don't know how I ever got along without it. 

I'll continue to update this review as I get more use on the seat and let you know how it's holding up against the elements.  If you are interested in getting a seat like mine, tell Seaspension that Florida Inshore Angler sent you and you'll get a discount.