hallj

Mine was leaking too. I like those drives because service is a sinch!

Jeff

bertsboat

Going to rebuild the port side and the steering rams Thursday while I have a good connection. I thought $20 was reasonable. I removed the ram myself and too it to Hydraulic supply in Jax and they cleaned it on a machine and installed new seals while I waited, all for just $20.
So, I went out and developed an oil leak. One of the hoses from the engine to the remote oil filter started pissing all over the place. Could have been an engine blower but luckily it was not. The dip stick was at the bottom of "add".

gavinson

Hello.

I can't get this boat out of my mind. I haven't been able to do so for years now.

Something on the order of twenty years ago, a friend took me to outside the city limits to show me an unfinished boat hull sitting on the ground at a marine junk yard/mechanic/storagelot/builder. It was a blue Fino 30. I gazed at it for hours it seems, and wondered how the this thing could just be sitting out here on the ground. What the hell was wrong with the world, I thought. My friend went on to live a normal life, while I was stuck with this damn boat in my brain. It was everything I wanted. Classic lines. Notched for Arnesons. You're not gonna see another at the marina. The molds for it also sat on the ground not more than 50 yards away. I came to understand that the molds were purchased from Florida and brought here. A couple of hulls were laid up, one was blue and one was red. The red one went off to a buyer "somewhere", and the blue one sat in front of me. Somehow a "third" hull was sent to Seattle where it was being finished and offered for an arm, leg, thigh, neck, and shoulder. (I eventually tracked that down to Yadfish Yatchs). I was not in the position at the time to financially undertake the project, but I drove back out there from time to time over the next years checking to it to see if it was still sitting there. Even though it was moved a couple of times, it was still there. At one point, I even chased down some used Arnesons and put up a down payment them, hoping that the toy gods might shine on me someday soon.

I eventually came to a point that I thought time and money might allow me to take on the project, so I went out to make them an offer on the hull. They told me that they had traded the hull to a guy for a trailer from a semi-truck which they needed for storage, but that he had never come to pick up the hull. A couple of years went by and still he had not picked up the hull. I tried to track him down but really had nothing to go on. I eventually let the Arnesons go, and gave up. Except, of course, I still have this boat in my head.

So someone tell me, what part of this story do I have wrong? Is this the red hull?

Panther

My father owned a 30' Fino built by Magnum. He orignally saw the boat at the NYC boat show and decided to have one built for himself in place of buying a Cigarette.

The boat was originally built with 350's and "push-button" electronic transmissions. That didn't last long and after the first season of blowing up transmissions he had a pair of twin turbo 454's built by Flagship Marine in Long Island, NY. Engines, as I mentioned, were twin-turbo, about 600 hp a piece with water injection.

Here are some old scanned pictures I have laying around;

Panther

Couple more pictures of my fathers Fino from the 70's. Not sure what happened to it. We haven't seen it since the mid/late 80's. Rumor has it the new owner ran into a jetty and the boat sank but that was never confirmed... It would be interesting to find out if it's still around.

After years of my family not owning a boat, I bought my first boat on my own in 98' after hearing my father say we'd get another one for over 10 years. lol

bertsboat

Thanks for sharing your cool photos. Your Father must have been a really cool gut to have the foresight to get a Fino as opposed to a Cigarette. Good move.

olredalert

iTrader: (1)

-----Panther,,,You dont, by chance, have the original serial # around for your Dads Fino, do you??? My Fino, originally red, was a stolen and recovered boat way back in the 80s and as near as I can figure, with the Florida assigned #s confusing things, mine was probably # 26 out of the original 30 built. I thought my boat was probably always in Florida but who knows???........Bill S

Panther

Sorry Man, I don't know and wouldn't know where to start because my mother disposed of most the service records we kept for the boat sometime in the mid 1990's. Flagship who was based in Long Island (now located in Florida) did all the engine work before we moved to NJ and once we moved to NJ it was kept at Irwin's marina.

The best I can figure would be to check with the USCG vessel search center. My father had the boat documented under the name Doreen. We always got hassled when we moved to NJ because it had no numbers on the hullsides because he didn't want to put numbers on the boat.

Panther

They called him "Frankie Chains" or "Frankie Fino" back in the 70's because of all the gold chains he wore and for owning the Fino.... lol

The pic above with the little kid sitting next to him is me.

Panther

My fathers business went belly up in the 80's and the boat was repoed by Irwin's Marina in Red Bank, NJ due to a mechanics lien.

The fact that yours was stolen/recovered seems plausible that it could be the same one? As far as I know, Irwins never had the right to sell our boat but my family didn't have enough money to sue them because of what they were going through in the family business and let it go.