I did ask Mike and Paul, both of which know how the 37 OL was built. The boat is NOT a modified 40 Hustler. Obviously Mike grew up at Hustler, so there were similarities, however the bottom geometry and step design / location is unique to the 37 OL.

Designed by accident or not, it was out years before reggie invented the stepped hull.

That is awesome, you just never know until you try it. I'm sure they had no idea what they " stumbled " on. It reminds me of all the old stories my Grandfather ( God rest his soul ) used to tell me. "A guy was walking home from school, 22 miles of course, and he twisted his ankle and used a coffee cup to keep it in place for the rest of the walk, and that's how the came up with the ace bandage". You just never know, and I am very impressed that you guys knew the history of this

You obviously did not read animalhouse's last post.

animalhouse is only denying how the 37 OL design started, not how the 40 Hustler started. The 40 start is Fact as I posted and I guess Mike changed his story from when he started OL of where the 37 came from. Not going to argue this point anymore.

jass
do yourself a favor and take a serious look at the 40
the ride and handling are terrific and the freeboard and headroom are great.
I have been on a triple 40 numerous times and to this day I still say it is my favorite.
The 40 and 37 OL were spawned off the 32 . Bottoms and design may have changed but if you look at the bow to the faring you can see a big similarity in the lines of all 3.
The 40 IS the first stepped hull that everyone on copied and Hustler developed.
Plus Paul and Mike were there at the beginning.
C

I'm looking at 3 37's at the moment.. The 40 in the classifieds is too much for a project at this point, but looks awesome, everything has been redone except paint and drives.. then I have to look at re-sale.. and it is easier to sell the OL. Thanks. Jeff

WRONG.

Hustler did not invent anything regarding stepped hulls. Stepped hulls were invented in the 1800's, and all speed records set by planning hulls prior to 1922 used stepped hulls, as did nearly all records thereafter. In most cases, records with non-stepped hulls only happened when there were explicit rules forbidding stepped hulls. 1930. The term "hydroplane" prior to 1960 or so, where it became connected to the three-point hydro, generally meant a stepped hull.

A US fellow living in France patented the stepped hull in about 1907, but the patent mentioned multiple steps. Such hulls were called "fast steppers" or "shingled hydroplanes."

The term "shingled" came from the fact that the steps were often introduced by adding wedges to the bottom of an otherwise warped bottom. But many, and perhaps most, were constructed with explicit steps in the structure.

Apparently, the first single step hull was build by Christopher Columbus Smith (who later started Chris Craft) in 1917 for Gar Wood. It was named MISS DETROIT III. Here is a picture of that boat, in a museum today:

http://www.vintageraceboatshop.com/i...I/P1050020.JPG

The problem with stepped bottom boats, build at the time from wood, were structural: they often broke up at speed.

Therefore, the rules for the Gold Cup races were changed in the 1920's to disallow stepped bottom hulls. The first non-step bottom boat to win the Gold Cup was that most beautiful Baby Bootlegger. But it actually finished second in the race to another Crouch design that had a shingled bottom that was a "cheater" in that while steps and shingles were outlawed, boats could be lapstrake, so Crouch just turned the lapstrakes at an extreme angle, to effectively have lots of angled steps. After the race, the officials disqualified the faster boat.

So it was always known that stepped hulls were faster.

About 1930, the Gold Cup rules were again changed, to again allow stepped and shingled bottoms. Many of the fastest boats of the 20's were retrofitted with shingles and became substantially faster, if, in many cases, poor handling leaping monsters.

Stepped offshore deep vee bottoms were common in the 40s and 50s. Here is an example of an Italian deep vee offshore racing beast from the early post-war years:

Oops, I don't see a way to post a picture. Its a good one.

Anyway, the fact that many people simply forgot that such stepped hulls were common, is not a reason to imagine that anyone alive today invented them.

There are many museums with ancient stepped hull powerboats, and many books with extensive discussions, and much work done by NACA in the 1920s and 1930s on stepped hulls.

In fact, those famous PT Boats originally had stepped hulls. The later US built ones did not, because gas was cheap for the USA (only), and the non-stepped hulls were stronger.

High speed planning navy boats of all major WW2 combatants (including England, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan) had single step bottoms, and a few had multiple step bottoms.