Boats, hydrofoils and more trailers….

Keith may have had several boats but the one I remember is the one he built in the basement of wood and some plastic resin/polymer he coated it with. The name of the polymer escapes me at the moment.  It made the boat heavy but it was waterproof. The room would become the Rec room soon.

Dad and his boat in the some to become rec room

In the photo below is the boat.  The piece on the side was for a wheel attachment with a shaft.  He would put two on so he could roll the boat around.  The boat was painted with paint from his collection. The interior was gray, the top was yellow, the sides were green and blue or red. He put whatever color where he needed it. He would chuckle when people would argue about the colors.

It did float…

Did he name this boat, of course, but it is really long and silly. It started with the name Tony and that was his dog when he was young. He then added my name and the name of his sisters make-believe friend….It was very long for a name, something like the Tony Misuk, McBonnie…..  See Tony in the photo below, he was a beautiful dog.  I finally know what he looked like after all these years.

Dad with his dog Tony and brother Gordon

It didn’t stop there, Keith added an extension:

See the extension

This might make it easier to see the extension

Then he added hydrofoils to the sides and tested it out on Lake Washington. It is the wooden thing in the picture below. Unfortunately, I cannot show you how it looked unless I pulled out his videos of the boat being tested out on the water.

He did write to the Seattle Times in March of 1961 about his Back-Yard Hydrofoil, Almost works; 1 end rising:

The Hydrofoils

The idea was to make a boat fly like an airplane.  Click on the article and then hit your back button to return.

Backyard Hydrofoil article

Now he needed something to house the boat in so he designed a new trailer.  This trailer he could raise and lower the top.  He could house his boat in the trailer and take it to the lake.  In the second picture he was pulling the trailer with the Dreamboat.

New Trailer with boat and boat extension

Dreamboat and new trailer for camping

Well he didn’t stop there, he bought a 1955 Cadillac and cut it in half behind the front seat, put an extension on the frame of the Caddie so he could add the trailer to the Cad part and make himself a car trailer combo. He called this the “Freek.”

Caddie with trailer attached

Sadly all these creations were sold in the 1970’s and who knows what happened to them.