As to T2x's humility, he has a lot to be humble about. Where....? Miami Marine Stadium after he just broke the s**t out of a Switzer wing.

T2x, Got any pictures from the late 60's showing the twin engine boats with tall Mercs with 6 trumpet exhaust pipes blasting out the back? I remember watching one of those races out in Colorado in somewhere around 1966. Awesome sounding.

Shazaam!!!!!!


T2x

Tower 'O' Power

For the record...a lot of these pictures are coming out of the contributers at the Screamandfly website........

T2x

Which was first the Shadow 21 or the Challenger 21? Both gerat boats and tons of fun especially one I was in with a twin turbo BBC, 65 at 3200rpm and 1?? at 6000 Thanks, Ironman.

Challenger was the first and original, then came the shadow T2x, lived it, he can post the real story.
The Challenger above ran mid 90's when I got it with twins, a lot of fun but not a great day to day boat.

RT

First came the Challenger 21..in 1976.. The boat , designed by George Linder won an array of awards and is still , arguably, (Brownie has had a number of contenders for that title as well) the best example of vee design and construction to date. The design was a very clever advancement of the wooden Eltro vee hulls made by ex Raveau employees John Ives, and Bob D'argagnon in Islip, Long Island and raced by, among others, George and I in the 60's. In 1979 Challenger Boat Co. (owned by George and two partners)..closed down. At the time there were two sets of molds for the 21 foot hull at the plant in Long Island . Image boat Co. (a New Jersey company I was a partner in ) bought one set and continued to build those Challengers that George Linder had on order..and there were many. Due to an oversight John Coen of Superboat got the other set at auction ( We didn't know they existed until too late). The 21 Superboat followed ( a nice, fast, good handling boat...but without the custom hardware, custom vinyl, teak work, and full monocoque balsa core construction.)....John also had in his possession molds for the only fibreglass hull Eltro had ever built...... That is the 16 foot Superboat that you may have seen as an open cockpit fishing boat.

After seeing the Superboat, George and I decided to distance ourselves from it through a redesign of the Challenger deck, adding a molded in Windscreen, and an insert of the hull mold at the transom..... giving the boat a built in "Back Porch"... an 8" overhang. This design which we called the Shadow 21 seemed to handle a bit better and was a smidgen faster. That boat was the first to carry the "Team Shadow" logo..... The construction standards were identical to the original Challenger and the weights were basically the same.

At about this time we conducted a series of tests on stepped bottoms using both I/O and outboard hulls......... and after proving again that Vees had speed and handling limitations, we combined my tunnel boat experience, George's monohull design and engineering expertise, and our combined years of rough water marathon racing experience ....to create the Shadow Cat.

In an interesting twist of fate........ The original Shadow 21 molds were recently purchased by a Long Islander, Wes Werner, whose father, Sonny, raced Eltros...with George and I back in the day.
I guess the circle is unbroken.


T2x

Thats neat! Thanks for sharing T2x.

Firewalker,
Do you know the 21 Challenger named "Uncle Guthrie"? It was on Lake Muskoka back in the 80's.