I am a huge Challenger fan. I ran with the Heritage team on Long Island in the early days and co-piloted Don Geed's boat. Also had my own which was supposedly the only all BALSA(even the transom) boat they built. Before that we all had 16 foot Superboats or a reasonable facsimily and ran around going as fast as we could. John Cohen made a hell of a boat and still does!
I broke the balsa transom on the Challenger after having my blown up 235 Johnson rebuilt by Elly(sp?) Langdon( If anyone remembers him, what an engine builder). Boat ran real fast and very light but transom went by by. I really loved driving the twin engine boat. We built out alot of challengers at Heritage back in the day. Don Geed and John Biegler owned the place. I just hung out there and did some rigging. We would rig boats at night after our "real" jobs, then go to Howard Johnsons for dinner. Joey DeTorre, George Linder and his dad, Don, John and I, good times. Ah the old days!
Maybe I need to pick myself up a 21 to play with, it would have to be a twin engine boat.

Mine had a balsa transom.
Mines for sale on scream and fly, pm me if interested....the only perfect one left!

i think most of the original challengers were all balsa.if the boats were rigged properly that was never a problem.

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That was my "Blue" 21' Challenger around 1989-1991.

I had started looking for my old 1979 blue 21' Challenger back a few years ago and finally discovered George Linder had it. Here is some history about it.

I first came upon it when some fellow was driving it around Long Island sound and it had a 300 Evenrude on it. I watched him having a horrible time driving it with a lot of chine walking at any planing speed. Having prior owned a 1979 21' Superboat that Joey Imprescia had set up, I knew what was wrong so I offered to buy it and was lucky enough to get it that same day. After raising the motor higher and higher I had it well into the 80's and running straight as an arrow with an Omc Raker prop. The boat was driven mainly around the Long Island North Shore area back then.

I once was confronted with 6'-7' seas between Block Island and Montauk. Having driven over on a calm (1.5'-2' seas) sunny morning with a friend for lunch, we had no idea a storm was rolling in from the north east. When returning later I had to navigate between extremely high waves for an hour or more where we could not see over the waves in front or back of us. Once the seas lowered to about 4' I (thankfully) had no trouble running on the tops as long as we both remained standing with knees bent. It was a very well built boat thankfully. I will never forget that day and neither will my friend.

Keith Nelson, D.C.

Mines still for sale!

Great thread!!!

great thread !! i would love to know how many were made ?

here's mine...

Liking the Yamaha power!!!

Mines gone

Great thread nice to see some old pics of my boat before I owned it.
Here it is in its current state, needs some tlc but still running strong for a 35 year old hull