Fully restoring his vintage Landau pontoon wasn’t in Corey Martin’s original plans—far from it, actually. When Corey purchased the 1984 craft for $1,700 in 2020, it had been severely neglected. But he knew it would work just fine for his needs. Corey and his wife Kelly live in Canyon Lake, Calif., and at the time they were just looking for a boat that could get them out on the reservoir.

“The boat was in rough shape, but my plan was to just throw some towels over the seats,” recalls Corey. “I had no plans of actually restoring it.”

However, with multiple motorcycle and golf cart restoration projects included among his current list of hobbies, it didn’t take long for the wheels in his head to start turning on what he could do with this boat if he were to tear it down.

“I’m a project guy and I love restoration; it’s kind of in my DNA,” says Corey. “My dad restores old vintage motorcycles, cars and all kinds of stuff, and soon this pontoon took on a life of its own.”

Other than recruiting some friends from time to time to help with heavy items such as mounting a new motor, he did most of the project himself in his front yard. Corey has been working on it for five years now: the bulk of the build took place from 2020 to 2021 and he’s added a little to it each summer since.

Off And Running

Corey owned a ski boat and has been around boats most of his life. When the couple decided to start a family they wanted to get something that was a little bit easier to get on and off of than his ski boat. 

“Again, my thinking at the time was to buy an old pontoon boat and literally cover the seats with towels,” says Corey. “We wanted to buy an old beater and continue to beat on it, but after I bought it and started to fix a couple of things it was a full snowball effect. There was no stopping the freight train once it started rolling. I stripped it down to the pontoons and thought, ‘Well, here we go. Now we’re going to have to redo everything,’ and that’s where it all began.”

Full Support

Since he originally wasn’t planning to restore the Landau or really put any additional money into it, he had to count on his wife being understanding of the idea.

“As the days progressed and the parts started flying off, I don’t think my wife fully grasped what was going on,” says Corey. “I kept selling her on, ‘I’m just going to do the seats, and then maybe do this or that.’ It turned into a helm, a motor, Biminis and sending out the frames to powdercoat. I think before either of us realized how deep I was getting into it, I was already into it, but luckily she was fully supportive of what I was doing.”

After selling the ski boat, the pontoon became the couple’s only method of getting out on the water and when you live on the lake, not having a boat isn’t an option. It got to the point, Corey admits, where his wife wanted to get the project done just as much as he did, just so they could get back out there.

Foundation Importance

The outer U-shaped logs are 21 feet long by 22 inches tall, but were in rough shape when he bought the boat.

“If I were to do this again I would buy a pontoon boat that had much better logs on it,” admits Corey.  “I’ve sunk a lot of time and money into this boat and really the only part that is left from the original is the right and left pontoons and some of the fencing. If that’s the only thing you’re going to be keeping, then starting with really good pontoons is important.” 

The boat sat on Lake Mead in Nevada for an estimated 30 years, and the pontoons ended up being much worse than he had originally anticipated. It took Corey close to four days just to get rid of all the barnacles and calcium buildup. After that many years he says most of it was etched into the aluminum so the aluminum was dented, pitted, and weakened, but he did his best to repair the logs with bondo and Flex Seal.

“The outside logs aren’t very buoyant. They’re terrible, but still do the job,” says Corey. “Like I said before but feel it’s worth repeating: if I were to ever do it again with the plans to do a full restoration, I would make sure the boat had really good pontoons with integrity to them with no damage and go from there.” 

Corey ended up adding a third center pontoon log that he bought in Havasu for $500. The pontoon was 28 feet long at the time, but he reached out to a friend who is a fabricator and they cut the back entirely off and fabricated a transom and motor mounts so the boat can now hold up to a 200hp motor if that’s what he wanted. The 25-inch tall center tube is now 22.5 feet long, which led to his upgrading to a better trailer than the single axle one that came with it to accommodate for the deeper pontoon.

PontoonStuff

Today the interior looks like a new boat and Corey is quick to credit PontoonStuff and DeckMate for helping to make his old Landau what it is today. 

“I went with DeckMate and pontoonstuff.com for the majority of my build and they were great to work with,” says Corey. “PontoonStuff has a great website. I drew an outline of the boat on the ground with sidewalk chalk off the measurements from their website to make sure everything would fit. The website gave me all the specs that I needed and it was super easy to order with everything coming directly to the house.”

While the helm, furniture, flooring, and the major upgrades came from PontoonStuff (with the Biminis coming from DeckMate), Corey also found a lot of parts he needed on Facebook Marketplace and Amazon. He even reached out to the original manufacturer for decals to complete the look.

“I gave Landau a call after I noticed on their website they had some nice decals,” says Corey. “I bought them just to give the restored pontoon a factory look and to maintain some of its history.” 

Work In Progress

Last season Corey added LED’s around the exterior trim and put a ski tower on the back with speakers on it. This season he added a piece of fabric to connect the dual Biminis and close the gap so now both are connected. However, the biggest addition this summer was to swap out the outboard. It now has a 2014 Mercury 115hp on it after replacing the 2001 75hp Mercury he had originally added. 

“Another tip when planning a restoration project is to start with a good motor,” advises Corey. “I’ve changed the engine out twice on this. In hindsight I should have spent a little bit more for a boat with a solid engine. It came with a 1977 Mercury Tower Of Power and it didn’t even run. It was terrible.”

Future Plans

Corey is considering adding PontoonStuff’s luxury line of seats to his boat, but the next thing he for sure plans to do is reskin the underside of the boat that is currently two-thirds covered. 

“I literally used the old fencing panels off the boat as the skin,” says Corey. “If you were to look under it you’d see those old panels with the 80s graphics underneath it so I’d like to change those out.” 

Splash guards, more interior lighting and other upgrades are on the horizon at some point, but that’s about it.

“Once that stuff is done I kind of want to list it for sale and buy another project and start over,” says Corey with some hesitation. “If I don’t end up trying to sell it, I kind of want to add the LilliPad Diving Board. I know my kids would love it.”

The Pontoon Life

The couple’s two young children love getting out on the lake and enjoy being on the pontoon.

“I never really saw myself as a pontoon boat owner, but now that we have kids it’s by far my most favorite boat,” says Corey. “The ability to do whatever we want with it, the ease of getting it on the trailer, running it up on the beach, the safety for the kids, and that we have so much room are just a couple of examples of why I love having a pontoon.” 

No Looking Back

If he decides to sell his current boat and start over with another restoration project, it is sure to be a pontoon. In that case he will take the lessons he’s learned over the years and apply them to his next project. But regardless of what happens he’s still extremely satisfied with how his Landau build turned out. 

“I learned that I never should have put this much work into the boat with those outer `toons, but here we are,” concludes Corey. “I’ve had an absolute blast building the boat so no regrets.”