TOPIC: Interesting Article Reviewing the Fin-Era

This is an interesting article from the May 1962 issue of MotorBoating by Charles Bell, an expert in fiberglass boat-buiding who was a columnist for MotorBoating and also the writer of one or two books on the subject. He wrote the article reviewing the fiberglass boat-building boom of the 1950's and the craze of fiberglass that resulted in so many of the wild designs most of us find inteesting:

books.google.com/books?id=j-UzCwJcaB8C&lpg=PA132&ots=-NZC2iKPV-&dq=%22Charles%20Bell%22%20fiberglas&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q&f=false

From my understanding, Mr. Bell felt like some of the late '50s-early '60s finned boats were junk. I guess one man's junk is another man's treasure

He had some good points regarding designing for style rather than performance. The horsepower limits on these old boats are for good reason, because of the many round-bottom designs without strong chines, low transoms, lack of splashwells (until 1959 or so), and other issues. There was a reason the OBC had to step in and create a standards guide for boat-builders. I gather that he was a "form follows function" sort of guy, and took it as a slight that many boat builders chose to pursue industrial designers as consultants rather than naval architects as he himself was. And probably abhorred all the garage-builders out there who splashed a mold off another boat and started production that way.

Handy Andy:

Good post and thread Sir!

I remember the day my Dad purchased our 1960 Glasspar G-3 from a dealer in northern Wisconsin. That dealer also sold "Chris-Craft" and took on the Glasspar line of boats. This was in 1959 and the salesman told my Dad "Are you sure you want one of these plastic boats??" LOL! Anyway, my Dad told him,..."Yup, my Son likes the Glasspar G-3 Skiboat." Well, the rest is history as I now own that same boat which is over 50 years old!