Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

220, 222 whatever it takes... http://www.santacruzpl.org/readyref/...gasoline.shtml

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

bingo.......30 ft. velocity with comp. power was min 15 mph faster then 28 cigarette..........Paula and Ron Aiken difd real well racing that boat early 80s.
My 41 with fuel and personal stuff........tools,parts cleaning gear, fluids, ect.................8600 pounds......there goes the wave smasher myth.........mark...........

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

There was a 36 in the cfds. Will take lots of pics tomarrow. She is beautiful!!!! It will run 75-80.

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

so is it still for sale? is it the one that has a bunch of shades of green? almost like a cig paint job? they wanted 150k ?

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

the price is right but it was blue fade with a apache "head" on it

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

http://adcache.boattraderonline.com/6/2/8/77219328.htm
???

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

http://adcache.boattraderonline.com/6/7/4/83806774.htm
:cool:

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

http://adcache.boattraderonline.com/6/5/9/84822459.htm
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Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

none of those are the boat I am thinking of. have you got one of them?

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

How much are you looking to spend? Send me a pm.

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

sent you a pm

Re: lightest v bottom of the 80's?????
 

I have Betty Cook's 2nd Larry Smith Scarab, KAAMA. Kevlar/epoxy with Carbon fiber reinforcements. Larry indicated the boat is around 8,000 pounds dry. He said the first boat was some 1,200 pounds heavier.

The deck flexes when I walk on it, but the bottom is very thick judging by the transom drain. It is about 3 inches from the bottom, outside, and nearly touches the bottom on the inside- Larry said about 2-1/2 inches thick in that area. There are 3 full length stringers and has 2 more in between from the engine bay bulkhead forward. The stringers are about 16 inches deep along most of it's length.

The stringers are placed directly above the lifting strakes for direct load transfer. As I recall there are 11 bulkheads total. I think Larry Smith put all the beam stiffness he wanted in the bottom from the chines down, and the rest is as we say- laginappe.

There are no signs of stress cracks, and that is significant considering Betty raced her for 4 years and Ron Hirschberg a few more. He raced it as Revenge, and is in the 1985 Apache Offshore Challenge video. He retired when someone on board broke some ribs in the 12 footers. To be continued....

Lightest V bottom in 80's
 

Velocity in Pompano made 2 intentionaly VERY light 30 footers in the early 80's. One for snow ski magnate Franz Kneisel with cut down sides, 2 man cockpit, dual merc stock 200's, "bamboo" stringers & all the trick stuff. Rigged in the Pompano shop in a hurry & taken straight to Key West for the World's, where they won their class. That baby was "light."
Second was for (late) Walt Beasley of DelRey- full size 30' that was paper thin to run with dual stock Merc 200's for whatever class that was back then (some sort of "stock" class). Walt ran a few races with his son & won his class each time. Both ran 2 man crews & they were not "large" folks. We figured the fuel close to save weight. That racing class was short lived & Walt converted his to a pleasure boat. Walt also owned & raced the 1'st Vel. 22, which he raced some & set a kilo record with. Some of the faster 30's were quite heavy, including the Aiken's. When Steve & I raced the 1'st 30' in P class, the class leading Suthphen's were doing 66-68 at start with full tanks. Our 30 was 10mph faster, which was pretty much the real world advantage for that (at the time) advanced (Allison) design. Average race was about 2 hours, which had us 10-20 miles ahead of the other P boats, in front of M class & finishing with S class. It was fun & we were protested several times because the traditional Vee bottom folks assumed we were cheating. Steve cleverly had respected (late & Great) Keith Hazel refresh our stock 280 Mercruisers after ea. race & Keith convinced them to stop wasting their dough with the protests.

Well its not in tha 80's but close enough! I have a
79 32 Excalibur that weighs in at 5300lbs with no fuel. its a Kevlar boat 454 trs drive runs low 70's (71, 72mph) handels rough water pretty good too The deck of this boat is thin!! It could be used as a spring board it flexes so much!!!

I would bet that he did I know of some cigs that you couldn't walk on the deck and you could count the fingers of someone standing outside of it on the side the sun was hitting and quite clear I might add!!!

Velocity light and fast:boat:

I think it was 1978 or 79, I went to work for Rocky Benihana, we built a super light 38` Bertram, the # 5 boat. The hull and deck with engine hatch and fuel tanks weighed 2,900 lbs. That was very light for those days, all Kevlar 49. I also rigged some of the original Kevlar Scarabs for Gentry and Ippolito, I believe those boats were in the mid 3.000 lb range Hull deck engine hatch and tanks. The Bertram with Kiekaefer Aeromarine 468`s ran 88 to 90 mph.

Glass Resin & (impregnated) fibers are quite translucent. You can lay it 1" thick & still see light & shadows through, unless you do as some builders did & spray a thin coat of black gel coat behind the outer/surface coat. Also, if there's some sort of opaque material sandwiched between, it's more opaque. Can't recall he name of the thin white perforated sheets we began using at Velocity at some point to stiffen & thicken (without adding weight) thin sides. The stuff made a hull's sides seem like concrete when pounded by hull thumpers at boat shows, and when flattening the waves to show the Cats the way through = :>) (of course, once they found the way through, it was all over..........DOH.....)

I dont know about mid 80's ,but my 32 footer weighs 5200 pounds fully rigged with 55 gallons fuel.
SSM #4 tranny and all.
But its built in 92.
My quess for the mid 80's would be the origin from the powerplay,cant remeber the name. But the 33 with twinn BB only weight 6800 pounds.:rolleyes:

Fountain offers as an option a light layup

Jay, the white perforated cotton-like material was called "Coremat". All the Velocitys used the 2 mil thickness version. It was just introduced in the early eighties & an incredible new product for stiffening a large panel area. It is a commonly used product these days in boat building. Another new product that had just come out in about 1984, which we take for granted these days, was 1708 Biax glass. Talk about a major labor saver, resin saver & weight reducer. I brought this into the Velocity plant, used it, loved it, and never looked back. Also the regular GP(general purpose) resins were of excellent quality back then, very strong, until about 1987, when they started removing the carcinagens, etc, out of it, and reducing its Barcol Hardness(strength). We then started experimenting with a newer and much more expensive resin that Ashland Chemical was begining to promote, called AME4000. Big mistake. It never cured in the mold. They sent another free drum of it, saying it was a bad batch. Second big mistake. Anyways, Velocity never used any PVC foam coring, only BalTek Balsa Core, 3/8" thick. Hullsides had no coring, only the bottoms. 1/2" A-C fir plywood is the ONLY plywood thickness that came into the factory. All the stringers on every Velocity were only 1/2" ply, with only two 1708 Biax wraps on all O/B boats, same with I/O boats, except the engine bay, which had 3 wraps. Where you there when we began building Larry Bishes big sportfish "BishCraft" with the inline six diesels, with the "Stepp" bottom?

[QUOTE=Ed;2643736]Jay, the white perforated cotton-like material was called "Coremat".

Yes, that's it. I recall the 1'st 22 footer we used it on, ran the Key West race & the rough water & agressive crew de-laminated the sides, and we could clearly see the Coremat- which was now the outer layers of the hull sides. They did bring it back to the docks though, which was quite a site. We did use some Klegecell pink foam coring in the bottoms at one point. I'm pretty sure we "tried" everything there was at some point, especially when I was at the original Pompano shop. We made 2 successful racing 30's that I know of with "Bamboo" stringers & hull/deck stiffeners. We dubbed Walt Beasley's "Scarlett O'Hara's" the "Bamboo Princess". As I recall the hull & deck weighed just 2200 lbs. We did less experimenting in the larger shop where Larry's boat was made.

Where you there when we began building Larry Bishes big sportfish "BishCraft" with the inline six diesels, with the "Stepp" bottom?

Yes, I was there for the initial drawings & all the way up until just before sea trials. You can call me in Jupiter at 561-746-2209 if you want to talk old times, or e-mail [email protected]. Please forgive me if I prefer to
call the pad design what it is --- "Allison" pad bottom. Briefly- Darris Allison invented & perfected it, Steve raced Allisons, When Steve flipped his Mirage & put a stepped & Pad Allison design on it & made a mold, he agreed to give Darris a Royalty for using his design & for his consulting on the design. He never did & Darris is quite bitter about that. I used to be an Allison Dealer & have owned a couple of them. R. Fountain had a 20" Allison with it's distinctive "beak" and his 1'st Fountain 32 looked just like a larger Allison 20. I'm not privy to his deal with Darris, but you can bet Darris got some payback through his helping Reggie. Just a big nautical soap opera. Gotta give Stepp credit for adapting that calm water design to rough water & larger heavier craft. We had endless discussions on all this stuff back then- bottom length, X-Dimension, pad size, pad shimming, props, cupping, bow lift, stern lift, ..............& so on. Some of this stuff was cutting edge back then & is mostly obsolete now. Those were heady times.
Did you work for Steve, or for a Supplier? Remember my late Cousin Gene Roppolo from the Pompano shop?

Jay, yes...I was there with your cousin Gene, quite the character, very funny old man, in a good way... He had already had a couple heart operations prior to his passing there at the plant. It was definately a shock & a big loss for us at the time. He came to us from Chris*Craft, Bradenton, building/tooling their original Scorpion Sportboat line they had at the time. Yup, the first 22' Velocity was all black gelcoat & named "TABU". Won a lot of races. We built & raced a number of 22's & 30's in the mid-80's that were unique. Bill Kaye, of "Captain Maintained" in his 22 & later, his 30...won three consecutive National Championships in race boats we built for him. All with stock 200 Mercury Outboards. We had a great hull design, great hull construction/rigging & and some great pilots. I flew back & forth to Regal to assist in their production line set-up during the sale. They were totally lost when it came to building a performance boat. Remember the "Veloci-Slot"? LOL! Some great memories from Powerline Road.