Watervan and a 'Sea Flea'
While walking the dogs the other day and 'zoning
out' about boats, it came to me that the hull form of Bolger's Watervan is
somewhat reminiscent of a 'sea flea' that my father built back in the
early 1950s. Zipper, as we named the boat, was just under 8 feet long and
maybe 3-1/2 feet wide -- a sheet of plywood. Although Zipper lacked a
cutwater/box keel, of course, like Watervan she had a flat toboggan
bow (I guess that made her a garvey), and the bottom curved down into very
shallow V before a flat run to the transom. The deck forward was canvas on a
hooped frame. Zipper planed with a 5 hp
outboard (I was a lot skinnier as a kid) and was fearsome with 15 hp.One of my most memorable moments occurred on a
Muskoka lake when I turned out from the flat water behind an underpowered,
overloaded runabout and, at speed, cut across its huge wake -- up the first
wave, down into the trough and THROUGH the second wave, Zipper's flat bow
slicing a ton of cold water right into my face!
I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for old Zipper
(not the design name, I don't believe) and wondering if I could rediscover the
plans somewhere. Dad was a regular reader of Mechanix Illustrated (and sometimes
Popular Science, etc.) and it's very possible that's where he found the plans
for that boat. I have tried searching on-line and found that Robert Q.
Riley Enterprises (http://www.rqriley.com/index.html) offers
a couple plans from such magazines but so far I haven't found a comprehensive
cataloguing of old plans.
If anyone can offer guidance I'd appreciate it. --John, in Victoria.