Originally Posted by 999JAY

Jon its lethal menace that's getting the turbine treatment along with some serious hull mods and a full re-design of the cockpit.
The hull has had a centre pod fitted along with an ASD8 drop box and BPM stern tube.The drive is on, the engine is in just working on mounts and other time taking bits.
I might post a few spy shots soon!

Jason

Originally Posted by rtaylor

Hold on, rivets may have been a problem back then, but aluminum boats are commonly welded today. Why arent peiople building more aluminum boats for offshore applications. Is it vibration, or what?

Originally Posted by PatriYacht

Id like to know more about these guys. Kaiser is from my old neighborhood.

Originally Posted by BROWNIE

As to the Li'l Fayva Shoes crash, that boat was built for Rocky Aoki, as was the larger Fayva Shoes 38'. Rocky had just effed himself up for the [insert number here] time. Both were treewood. It was built like a hydroplane, and weighed about the same. Clive (James had died of luekemia at this point) made Michel promise never to run the boat in the ocean before he approved the sale to Michel. We installed the very first set of Arneson drives on the little Fayva. In fact, during the installation, I took Howard Arneson for his very first catamaran ride in my Flight Marine fish boat. Anyway, the Li'l Fayva ran 126 mph, when the next fastest open boat was about a hundred. I think the race was still called the "Sam Griffith Memorial" (senior moment) at Fort Lauderdale and it was flatter than a pisspot. Michel decided to run the little boat. I launched it for him at Cougar on 188th, and rang up Clive in England, which swings like a pendulum do... Clive said, and I quote "If you let them run that boat in the lightest ocean swell, the boat will end up in the dumpster (not a shadow cat) and Michel and Bob will be dead!".

Michel said "Fook heem, I am the Champion of the World, and I will do whatever I want!. The mer is as smoooooth as a chambre pot". They had mechanical difficulties, and started dead (?) last. They caught and passed the entire fleet in minutes, and pulled up along side Arneson's Cougar treewood 38' which was leading at that point. In a terrific twist of fate, our cameraman, Brian Kreiske, was over them in a chopper. He was such a good photographer that, during the crash, he never let them out of the frame. Li'l Fayva magically transformed into an acre of orange plywood in 1 unbelievable second Thanks to our cameraman, about a hundred million people got a firsthand look at our engineering capability.

They were OK. Michel got pitched a couple of hundred yards. He was on the outside of the arc when the port side collapsed. Bobby Idoni was in the center of the spin, and was still sitting where the seat used to be!

Lots of the pieces were tethered together by wires and hoses and such, and I towed the whole mess a couple of miles to the beach. There was still one engine and drive intact. It was at that point that we decided to only build raceboats out of materials with a specific gravity of 1+, so that at least, it would have the courtesy to sink.