"messing about in boats" as much as I!
Go to my Photo Gallery sometime and you'll see a yellow 12.5-ft."Crackerbox" with a truly horrifyin' 500+ en-gyne to it! I needn't tell you that, on starts, the steersman is hiking out to port and the other guy pretends he's on a side-car motorcycle! That little poker-chip is composed of a few 1/4-inch slabs of Bruyzeel (Sp.?) Marine-tek draped over and above the motor-mounts. Without engine? 145 lbs. dry! A SICK boat--truly sick. It keeps pace with Jeff Magnussen's twin-RR Gremlin replica GarWood Gold-cup boat. I think it will out-accelerate most Corvettes and some cobras---up to 85 mph, whereupon they have to stop an dip the seat-cushions overboard!
"My" dream-boat will have tumblehome that will make those "barrel-back" Chris-Crafts look staid! I'm going for 7-foot beam astern at the waterline, tapering up to 3 feet at the deck level! Plumb bow (26 feet away), gold-chrome cutwater and ditto stern trim. Going to try for 500 "square" on the 351-408 rebuild. 14x25 Koenig two-blade prop. All I gotta do is hang around Winnnepesaukee on Race-boat weekend and then go to what I call the "crash auction".
Oh, by the way, Mark Mason has: 1) just bought a Cobra, 2) the largest collection or RR Gremlin.Merlin blocks in the Northeast and 3) made many calendars with his meticulously-rebuilt "Baby BootLegger" (1926 Crouch Goldcupper---or something like that). It was rebuilt at Breuce Barnard's Quisset (Cape Cod) Boat Yard----Falmouth High School (where I used to work) took the Hispano Sueza WW I fighter-plane engine over to New Bedford to be walnut-shell blasted to strip the paint---wild stuff. Mason predictably skipped out on the final bill!!
I think the 408C will get a 1990-2300 lb. boat outta the water pretty easily. Don't hold yer breath on this project, though---I'm still working on launching my 30-ft cutter for "ricin'" as Ron Butler would say.....
Cheers,
