Turns out I was wrong about a few things. The foam pillar isn’t crumbling and it came out very easily. Had to use the handicapped grabber to even reach it, but once I reached it, easy.
These nuts are way the heck down there, I taped a ratchet wrench with appropriate socket to an extensible pole. The weight of the ratchet wrench was enough to hold the socket on the nut, the extensible stick resting against the side of the kayak was enough resistance to rotational movement for me to tighten the nuts plenty tight.
And I’m done, just that easy. Maybe 10 minutes, going slow and careful.
Next up, the nut and washer for the forwardmost deck bungee fitting came off previously, I’m sure it will be a little harder placing the washer and starting the nut, but it’s WAY closer.
If I’d known it would be this easy I would have planned on going kayaking this afternoon!
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to make suggestions and try to help me. Your effort is truly appreciated. I learned a lot of useful tricks that may save some later day.
Looks like i’m a couple hours late but to answer the foam didn’t do anything except add some flotation. If anything with the yoga ball in there it is stiffer in the bow. The added bonus is she likes it as a foot rest better than the foot rests. Having a second position is nice on a long day on the water.
With the foam pillar removed it will be far easier to fit a float bag in the bow. A float bag will do a much better job at providing a useful amount of floatation to the boat and also greatly reduce the amount of water in the boat if it swamps. Make an assisted rescue easier and make the boat quicker to pump out.
You might want to place something like several layers of duct tape on the float bag where the through hull bolts are in case there are any sharp edges. I was able to thread stainless crown cap nuts on all my through hull fittings after one tore a dry bag.
When I first bought the kayak I bought oversized float bags to provide adequate floatation in the front. Although this photo was taken with the foam pillar installed, it looks pretty much like this now. A strip of nanotape for each bag keeps them firmly in place.
It’s the power of community! I was confident I’d get good advice because I’ve researched other questions with forum search. And I did. And it was easy. Because of you guys!
