THREE-POINT HYDROPLANE

[J T]

son is an HONOR TEENAGER at the county jail.

- Seen on a bumpr sticker

[Pop]

Neat; built one almost exactly like that as a kid except it was more closed and you knelt about dead center in it. Powered it with a 12 hp Sea King from Montgomery Wards. Getting started meant a jump for the bow when you hit the power, but soon as it planed, it was a real screamer! Bounced it off a wake once and landed a little sideways, ripping off a fin and had a real fun time getting 'her stopped! But it never sank! Replaced the fin & promptl drove it over a sunken dock (high water level), ripping a foot long gash in the bottom about three inches from my knee. I had to retire it after that, but what great summers it gave us!

What's you point?

Pop

[Bob the Tomato]

I like the price... $25.00 to build it back in the day.

[Sam]

Here's some more....Sam

[captmikey]

My dad was a builder and cabinet maker and was a lifelong subscriber to PM. Almost every winter when things were slow, we'd build a boat from PM plans. We built probably a half dozen hydroplanes from flat bottoms to setp bottoms to 3-point style plus a bunch of utilities and runabouts. We usually made full-size frame patterns out of brown kraft paper, and sometimes we'd re-size the boat and make it smaller or larger to deal with bigger or smaller motors. He had a friend that tuned and raced midgets, and he was also locally noted for "souping up" ordinary outboard motors. My favorite was a 10HP Mercury Hurricane with a quicksilver lower unit, although we once had a Mercury Mark 20H which was a little bigger. The biggest we ever ran was an old Evinrude SpeediFour that also had a quicksilver type lower unit. One of those hydros I think we clocked at around 65 mph on barnegat bay. Chump change for a cigarette now... but back in the late 50's and early 60's that was pretty scary fast.

I also remember "doping" the nose sections which were frameworks built like old airplanes. Canvas stretched over the frame was doped amd then once it was hard you applied the finish color enamel. Krash throttle, kneepads, and go like Hell.

Our last boat was a ski boat built off Glen L. marine designs. Mahogany deck & transome, oak stringers, awesome looking. He sold it when I was in the army, around 1966. Man was I PO'd when I got home. Went to store-boughts after that.

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:45:09 -0400, [e-mail] (J T) wrote: