Thanks for the kind words, the old steel Pontoon Boats were cool but sadly they are disappearing, the newest of the type are over 30 years old and every year a few more give way to rust and decay. It's also been getting harder to insure them, many carriers don't offer insurance on steel boats any longer. I imagine that the carriers took too many losses.
Yes, you can have new pontoons built from steel, it's expensive. I've seen some made from Stainless Steel, that boat sits on maybe I Dock at Wahweap? I think it was for sale last year but they have a small fortune in its refit and even though it's very cool it might cost too much. Same way would go for aluminum toons, you'd have to have them custom made and arrange a way to bolt them to your cross ties or change all your upper cross ties to aluminum and weld it all together. Steel and aluminum are differential metals, can't be welded together and don't even like to touch each other much.
At some point the principal of economic substitution enters the deal; it would cost more to modify and update to new pontoons than the boat would be worth. New steel toons, built, delivered and installed were about 50K through Lake Powell Marine 5 years ago. Who knows now days? I see the old Myacht Rentals, the aluminum 4 bedroom pontoon boats that replaced the Steel Boatels in the rental fleet as for sale at Aramark on Boat Trader. They are listed as in need of some work and updating for under 60k.
So Sadly the most ubiquitous house boat type of the 60's, 70's and 80's are starting to disappear but so are those of us who remember them when they were new
