boatme

Charlie

Keep pushing ahead my friend you are one of the good guys in the business

Top Banana

Thanks Christian. Actually while we were working on the plug and mold, we took an old banana boat for a customer up north and took it apart so the workers could see how they were made. While we had it apart, we replaced as much of the wood in it as we could, including the transom.

It was a nice project and everyone learned a great deal from it. Some of the photos below show the work....we also filled in those holes from the bow lights on the sides. Last shot shows the boat completed and waiting for pickup...in the background you can see the plug for the 35 waiting it's turn.

My son has boat #2 Banana Split. That boat we did the pretty much the same thing, with the exception of the transom, which was still pretty solid. In addition, we added a new deck from the new mold. The old deck had a non-skid surface on it and the new one is smooth. He likes it so much he isn't going to spoil the look with a hatch on the deck.

The last two photos are the Banana Split. The work was done in the same shop that did the restoration on Hammerhead, if you have been following that thread in the Apache section. All these boats have the same bloodline, so it's the same thing just bigger and smaller versions.

Top Banana

Here is some more of the Banana Split resto.

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And now the finish.......the last photo shows it as a brand new boat in yellow gel coat back in the 70's.

Next is windshield, interior and engine.

If any older banana boat owners would like a new deck, we could do that very easily.

Top Banana

Thanks for the kind words Marc.

Maybe we can get one of these out to the Mid-West one of these days.

sp123

I am the owner of the 2nd hull built by Charlie and Charlie Jr. last year...as he said we were off to a slow start but as every one who has seen the boat describes it as one bad ass looking machine.... It is now everything I had hoped for. We have been trying to test new props and we are still not done but just one last update with me alone and running yesterday at top speed with ... well not enough gas as I ran out.. Thank you Safe Sea for the tow..... 67.4MPH on both the Livorsi speedo and Garmin GPS.. I am still waiting for a prop that is being specially built by a local shop with a ton of experinece in these things and he seems to think I can get another 1-2 mph out of this boat.... I am very happy with everthing Charlie and Charlie Jr. have done for me as I have a kid in college and NEVER would have been able to get into this without all of their help. I have said to many folks, Airdog included.... if you are in or near RI please let me know my boat is at Brewers Greenwich Bay Marina in Warwick RI.... and lets go for a ride.... This set up is perfect for me as I am comfortable with the Evinrude for both reliability and and fuel efficiency but I know that 300 merc... will take it over the top... great job...

Top Banana

Thanks Steve.......We are really glad you finally have the boat performance you wanted.

What happened to the boat that Steve traded in to us? Thanks to Air Dog, it was sold to a gentlemen down on Long Island, NY and he took the Merc 225 off and put on a new jack plate and then mounted a 250 HO Evinrude.

Before he did this, he had the anti fouling paint cleaned off and then had the bottom blueprinted so it was perfect. The performance that he is seeing with the jack plate and the HO motor is 73 MPH.

We also assisted another OSO member with his resto of a sterndrive 24 in Texas. Photos below.

We hooked him up with Acrylico and they made some new style doors and hatch for the cabin for him.

He has tested the boat and is still trying various props on it. He hasn't given us any speed numbers, but I think he has a big smile on his face with the results so far.

Top Banana

What else have we been up to?? Well, along the way we restored one of our old race cars, to keep us busy while the boating market was down. We were invited by GM to display it at the Amelia Island Concours in the GM room as they celebrated "50th Anniversary of the small block engine."

We were pretty excited as we were one of the only 4 cars displayed in that room. Photo below of Junior Johnson, NASCAR Legend standing by the car.

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Since the civilian market is down for sales, we have playing around with various ideas for patrol boats...."Fast" patrol boats.

We built a 28 footer center console, with a couple of Evinrudes for testing and changing and testing and changing and, and, and....you get the idea....it wasn't a beauty queen.

But with limited power and a very crude setup we did get into the upper 70's. Now we want to take the lessons learned and see what we can develop out of our 39 foot mold...(Old Apache mold).......maybe 4 outboards of 300 HP each.....yeah, keep it interesting.

Top Banana

I still want to finish something that I started a while back.......in the 80's.

I was given an exclusive contract with the APBA to provide them with a one class offshore powerboat. This one class boat would have to be capable of racing 100 miles and be powered with a simple big block engine and sterndrive.

Perfect timing.....as soon as we signed the contract....fuel and interest rates began a race to the the moon and the project ended before it had a chance.

We had a lot of people who wanted to race and just didn't have the 6 and 7 figure budgets. This was an easy answer....low cost boats that would retain their value, as the next group of racers could buy them and the original group could move up to Production or Open classes.

Maybe the next few years might be a good time......what do you think??

Below is the drawing of the prototype back then.