New Project

[Andy Greene]

Had my eye on this 13ft 1970 Classic Boston Whaler for at least 15 years as it sat in a friends back yard slowly dyeing.
After years of bugging him for he finally parted with it. Rolled it home last weekend and got started on its restore. Much to my surprise , it cleaned up really well so far- Got all the old wood removed- picked up teleflex steering to replace the cable steer and even got the 1995 Johnson SLP 28hp fired up, purs like a kitten with a little tlc.
Next will be replacing all the interior wood - re rig electrical and steering and a ton of details. Very satisfied so far , I have wanted one since I was a kid growing up on Davis Island.

 

[FloridaScaleBoater]

You gonna replace the wood with mahogany? Or rebuild with Starboard?

 

[Hydro Junkie]

I thought teak was the standard, that is unless teak's just for show parts like handrails and such. Mahogany or teak, either way will be expensive with the cost of wood now days. From what I can see in the pictures so far, it will be worth it either way

 

[Tom Foley]

No need to replace that wood . sand it , coat it and send it !!

 

[Andy Greene]

I can save the main bench and the front bench - they are mahogany , but the rest is rotten. Been looking at Sapele Mahogany , much cheaper and can be sourced local, once stained its impossible to tell apart.
Knew I had to put an impellor in it so I pulled the lower today. fortunately the previous owner replaced everything with stainless hardware and it came right apart after all that sitting. He had given me a can of the original paint for the motor as well as the bill of sale and manual- so I decided to try the mid while I had it apart.
Now Im gonna have to paint it all-
.

 

[Gary Parker]

Wood, glorious wood - 3 coats of non yellowing epoxy and 10 coats of poly clear gloss.

 

[Michael Lewis]

Nice little whaler Andy. Those things were all over the water when I was younger. Unsinkable so if anything happened you just stayed with the boat lol. Never did like the dual lever shift and throttle though. I remember to old timers trying to get to the fuel dock on a flood tide and he hit the wrong lever and drove it right up on the dock lol...
They just fueled him up, pushed the boat back in and off they went.
Didn't hurt the whaler at all. Great little boats!!!
Mike

 

[Zimmerman]

I own one as well. Been in the family since birth. I have dubbed it the "Ruptured Guppy".

 

[Tom Foley]

Had one with a 35 on it . Old beater but it was fun for a while .

 

[Wasted wages]

My brother has the Whaler handed down from my dad, it has a 25hp merc on it.

We use it for lobster stomping down in the keys,, The night of opening season he and my nephew are out on the water at 11:59 pm
in the whaler,, with lights, bully nets and two coolers, counting down the seconds till midnight...

The two of them have rolled and flipped that poor boat over so many times,,, and it just keeps coming back for more.. The little steering console is no longer even mounted to the floor...it just slides around with the rest of the junk that ends up in the boat..

Good times!
It is one hell of a little boat!

 

[FloridaScaleBoater]

My brother has the Whaler handed down from my dad, it has a 25hp merc on it.

We use it for lobster stomping down in the keys,, The night of opening season he and my nephew are out on the water at 11:59 pm
in the whaler,, with lights, bully nets and two coolers, counting down the seconds till midnight...

The two of them have rolled and flipped that poor boat over so many times,,, and it just keeps coming back for more.. The little steering console is no longer even mounted to the floor...it just slides around with the rest of the junk that ends up in the boat..

Good times!
It is one hell of a little boat!

I miss bully netting for Bugs

 

[Andy Greene]

So , its been a bit since an update-
I decided to bite the bullet and go for the restoration , I could have used it the way it was but I hated all the spider cracks and had a few spots on the bottom that where improperly repainted- sooooo
Stripped the entire boat , flipped it over and put it on the trailer upside down and backwards to allow me to easily move it around . Its was a process by myself, but mechanical advantage is your friend, been sanding on and off as time permits, will ultimately repaint the bottom after repairs / re flip it and start on the interior. If I thought the outside sucked- the interior and all the angles are REALLY gonna suck but it will be worth it in the end. Target date / spring 2023 - lol

 

[Michael Lewis]

Looking good Andy. Are you going to leave the bottom painted seeing how it will be on the trailer or are you going back to the anti fouling paint. Will look great without it....

Mike

 

[Andy Greene]

Looking good Andy. Are you going to leave the bottom painted seeing how it will be on the trailer or are you going back to the anti fouling paint. Will look great without it....

Mike

Not sure yet Mike , I am a ways off from considering buying paint yet- lol. I would like to keep it as close to factory as possible, most I have seen tho tend to have the blue bottom. Time will tell. Interior for sure will go back blue.
I agree , the no anti fouling is a much cleaned look.

 

[Hydro Junkie]

I would trace out the logo on the side so you can get new ones (or masks if you decide to paint them) made. If you're going for a full resto, it only makes sense to put the logos back on. I spent several hours tracing the name and flag on the side and tail of the Slo-Mo-Shun IV so we could get them right when we did the Slo-Mo-Shun V restoration. Needless to say, it took hours more to lay out the graphics on the "V", but the results were well worth the time taken up front
You can just see the name on the side and the flag on the tail in this shot

 

[Andy Greene]

Mark , I made sure I found a good source for the factory decals - And yes they will be put back on .
Beautiful project you got to get hands on btw .

 

[Hydro Junkie]

You can thank the late Roger Newton for a lot of that. When the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum received the hull it had been partially disassembled and totally cleaned of all the debris and other stuff that had accumulated over the years it sat in storage. Roger took on the task of rebuilding the boat, under the oversight of HARM executive director David Williams and boat co-owner and HARM founder Ken Muscatel. Roger had two goals in the rebuild:

1. make the boat runnable, something that has continued over the past 30+ years with all restorations
2. make the boat a "perfect" museum piece, suitable for display in any museum with no additional work needed.

You can see the results of the work in the video shown here:

Just a bit of trivia on this one. Toward the end of the video, Ken brought the boat in from a demo run and, when he got out of the cockpit, he was holding a large piece of red fabric. That was actually Ken's safety parachute. Not sure why but, as he was coming toward the north side of the floating bridge(this was the normal approach used by the Slo-Mo team back in the 1950s since their shop was further up the lake), Ken's chute deployed and almost pulled him out of the boat. He spent the rest of the demo run shoving the chute under the deck on the left side of the cockpit.
My involvement with the "V" started after the left sponson rebuild. I spent the next several months at the HARM every Wednesday evening and all day every Saturday working on the boat after being DRAFTED by Roger. I have well over 200 hours in that restoration and learned a lot from the guys, such Don, who was interviewed in the video. It was from working with Roger, Don and the rest of the crew on the "V" that I really learned what it took to build a scale boat. Paying attention to the little details was just one of the things that I learned from Roger.

 

[Andy Greene]

Been a minute since an update- I went ahead and jumped off the deep end of the pool and went to bare glass, well getting to bare glass. the plan is epoxy prime after the fillet work - then roll and cut 2 part epoxy paint. Time will tell. More of project than I wanted but Im a stubborn sob.

 

[Gary Parker]

Andy - I was a stubborn sob as well who was taking his own sweet time with a similar project. What got me going was a deadline to move house - I went from a sideways sanded wooden boat in a garage to bottom painted on a new trailer ready to move in a frantic two weeks !