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

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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!!!

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.....)

Fountain offers as an option a light layup