First boat

The finished product with the winged horse on the bow and everything. It was soooo cool, and My dad built it two weekends.


Dot, are these the ones you asked about? The back of the pictures says 1957

I must have really liked this shirt.

I was about twelve when my dad built me my first boat. A friend down the street had an El Toro sailboat. It looked small enough to be built in a few weekends with very little materials. My dad could build or fix anything. We picked up some sheets of butcher paper and traced the outline of one side and half of the bottom of the El Toro. This was the plan to follow. If I remember right it took two 4X8 sheets of 1/4" marine plywood. The boat measured seven foot eleven inches long and four feet wide.
A friend of my dads had an old outboard motor that we got real cheap, or free, I don't remember which. It was a one and a half horse motor built in Munce Indana, probley in the 1920's. You had to wind a rope around the flywheel and pull to start it and the tank held about a quart of gas.
The first place the boat hit the water was at Lake Brittan, up in the Shasta area. We went on a two week vacation with the family ski boat and my new boat.
I was like Tom Sawyer on a two week adventure. My folks could not get me off the water. The family went to town a few times to get supplies and I would stay on the lake. I explored every cove and inlet. I caught fish, turtles, frogs, and anything that I could find. Life was very very good for a young boy and a new boat.