First Fiberglass Boat

[marvin4239]

This is our first fiberglass boat in 1954. We bought it well used and it was made by the old Herters Sporting Good Company. My Dad claimed it was the first fiberglass boat in Wilmington NC. The braces in it were cast aluminum and eventually corroded away and were replace with white oak. It was powered by a 18HP Evinrude and had plenty of power to ski behind.

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[TyBoo]

That is neat, neat, neat! Thank you for that picture. Is that you in the water and is she named after your mom, perhaps?

 

[Sea Wolf]

And how about that cable steering wound around the drum on the steering wheel?
Remember all those pulleys, clamps, springs, and other stuff?

Who's also old enough to remember the throttle and shift controls from Evinrude/Johnson that preceded those in the photo?

Before push/pull cables, there were twin aluminum rods that ran from the control box up front to the back and to the motor. The control box had beveled gears incorporated into it, and the rods turned to transmit the instructions to a short flexible twisting cable that coupled with the motor.

Encapsulated aluminum stringers and other braces held moisture and salt, if available, to the aluminum which then corroded and swelled up and eventually failed. You could see the stringers under the deck of a boat due to the aluminum swelling.

I had a sailboat built by Schock in 1983 that still had aluminum encapsulated in it!

Joe. :teeth :thup

 

[marvin4239]

Mike actually we didn't know who Joyce was the name was on the boat when we bought it. I think we were about the third owner. Yep thats me in the water. We lived on the ICW about Statue Mile 270 between Hampstead and Topsail Island NC.

Joe the cable steering was pretty high tech for us at the time. The aluminum eroded away and was replaced with white oak. The largest outboard that I recall at the time was a Johnson 30. We had four other boats from 22' down all wood Simmons and Barbour were some of the names that were popular. I remember as a kid hearing the old salts say "That fiberglass stuff won't catch on."




22 Simmons with builder/designer TN Simmons

Joe I'm old enough to remember the push pull controls. I also remember poling platforms before we had flats boats

 

[thataway]

Great photo.

I don't have a photo handy, but the oldest glass boat I owned was a ten foot 1941 Wizzard. I was looking for a dinghy for the motor sailer we took to Europe and there was an ad for "1941 fiberglass row boat" I didn't believe it, but the people selling it were the original owners and had the sales receipt. I belive that Wizard sold motors and boats through Western Auto. It was a very fine weave cloth, and not gel coated (painted inside and out) with a plywood transom (no glass over it)--screwed to the glass hull, and an oak external keel. I ruined it's historic value by glassing in the transom, putting another layer of glass on the bottom and replacing the keel with a teak keel and SS 1/2 round. I used this dinghy with a 4.5 hp outboard for 5 years and sold it with the boat. It probably was one of the very first production glass boats--and perhaps the only one which had documentation...I have never seen another one like it, but there must be a bunch out there somewhere.

In 1951, Glaspar brought a dozen 12 foot skiffs to Camp Fox, Catalina Island, where I was working. This was a prototype test to see how the boats held up with kids running them on the smooth rocks of the beach daily. One of my jobs was repair of the camp's wooden boats, so I took care of the fiberglass boats also.

In 1955 I pruchased a 13 foot Wolverine--this was a cold molded ply boat--no glass, but it had a 25 hp Johnson--drum steering and more modern controls. The 25 was also plenty of HP for skiing--as long as you went up on two and droped one for solom skiing.

Thanks for the memories of those great old boats!

 

[marvin4239]

Bob I remember the Wizard motors we had one that I think was 12 horse power. I bought a slide converter to convert slides to digital images and that's what the photo of the boat is. I'm still learning how to use it and the quality of the image shows. I'm slowly going thru slides with hopes of finding some pictures of our older wooden boats. The following picture is pretty blurry but its a fish cleaning table my granddad and I built. The base is a hickory tree that came down from a hurricane my Granddad and I cut it off level with a two man crosscut saw which I still have. We put a 4x8 sheet of 5/8 asbestosis for a work surface on top of it.