Vintage Race Boat Shop

  We maintain vintage wooden boats.

G-48  Obsession

Page 4 - Project completion, launching, Spring Romp, grinding

The new stepped/shingled bottom is finally painted with 3 coats of  Interlux Brightside green paint and is now ready for "the big flip" right side up.

Ah yes - that Spring ritual that we all love and look forward to - "sanding the boat". Enjoying the fun is your Webmeister Bill John, and Bob Mueller. Bob has been very helpful to us for many, many years. This year he helped again with 3 coats of Epifanes varnish on the deck and transom, and 2 coats of Epifanes black paint on the hull sides.

Getting ready to launch. That's Donnie McLean, my faithful riding mechanic doing some grinding on the aft step. Donnie shares my passion for vintage race boats and has been very helpful. The number of hours that we put into "Obsession" is unbelievable, but I think we actually enjoy working on the boat more than actually running the boat on the APBA Vintage Race Boat Circuit. Donnie also serves as my riding mechanic when we hit the circuit and run the boat on APBA vintage race courses, at most of the major stops - including The Detroit Gold Cup, Madison, Buffalo, Clayton, Lake George, and Wolfeboro.

Yup - we made it for our Museum's First Annual "Spring Romp" on Memorial Day Weekend. And even though it rained really, really hard, we still gave rides to 3 new Museum members. Yes, we all got very wet, but we also had great fun ???!!!

Grinding the aft step, belt sander, 60 grit, sawdust everywhere - I can still taste it ???!!!

But all was not well with the new stepped/shingled bottom design. At speeds over 40 MPH we experienced the dreaded "bow steer". It was dangerous, the boat would actually veer quite hard to starboard and loose rudder control - very scary at speed ???!!!

Both Donnie McLean and Jeff Magnuson drove the boat, pronounced it "unsafe", and then we hoisted the boat up at Jeff's boat house to "eye-ball' the bottom lines. There we were, the three of us, sprawled flat on our backs on Jeff's dock - looking up at the bottom lines of my Obsession. What a sight we must have been. But we spent some time there, discussing all possible causes for our dreaded "bow-steer".

 

The decision was unanimous - grind the aft step ???!!!

Page 5 - The results of our grinding sessions.

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