TOPIC: im a very lucky man

today i opened a package that came in the mail,and found the vollrath bowlight i was lookng for,thanks to some truely special friends,they each even included a christmas card ,which made this jolly old fat man tear up.
these special folks mean alot to me ,they went together and bought the light on ebay,just for me,i am overwhelmed with their wonderful gift and cards,i want to try to thank ,todd williams,ron vuyosevich,frank alguire,mark smith and jim bart,you have truely made my christmas a very special one,that i will remember the rest of my life,merry christmas to you all.
i also want to thank the rest of my good friends on fg,you are all in my thoughts,i thank you for being my friends,have a wonderful holiday,mine is!!sincerly john

John,
You are truly deserving of such a fine Christmas gift! Great job guys. John Merry Christmas to you and your family. You are in our thoughts also.

Bob & Kim

Merry Christmas John. We're the lucky ones for having a friend like YOU!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there is FiberGlassic land. Boating season can't come soon enough, LOL.

MarkS wrote:

Merry Christmas John. We're the lucky ones for having a friend like YOU!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there is FiberGlassic land. Boating season can't come soon enough, LOL.

Well said Mark.

Frank

i couldn't of said it any better mark. great job todd. ron

Merry Christmas, John! Its monday and I'm back on my computer [at work]. Was a nice surprise to hear from you by phone. Hope your New Year gets off to a good start, as well. PS Here are a few photos of the twin 450s that came with my Craig KitKat, that we talked about...

John,

You deserve it. Enjoy. To paraphrase George Peppard on the A-Team; "don't you love it when a plan comes together". Thanks to Ron, Frank, Mark and Jim for helping make this happen.

geez thanks for the great comments guys.
boy jim thats a very cool boat,1st time i ever saw one.

i called all the fellows responsible for the bowlight,and what a great pleasure to get to talk to each of them,the only ones i havent meet yet are mark s and todd,but i will someday,they are all great guys ,but thats what this forum is..good friends,good times,john

Congratulations, John! And special kudos to all those who came together to help you put that missing piece onto the bow of your fine old Cutter.

I'm not a classic boats guy myself -- well, rather, I wasn't one until relatively recently, of which more in a minute -- but I've been playing and collecting vintage basses and guitars and tube amps for the past 35 years, and what I'm seeing in forums like this and the AOMCI boards and so on is definitely analogous to what I'm used to seeing in that end of things. Very cool.

The reason I got intrigued enough in the classic-outboards side of things to be reading & now posting here is that my friend Melanie asked me to come help sort through all her late father's stuff when he passed away shortly before Christmas.

And I do mean *all* his stuff -- he was an inveterate collector of all things mechanical and fascinating, to the point of being a hard-core packrat (and, in his later years, at least, what I guess they're calling a 'hoarder' nowadays.) Oh, yeah, and Mel tells me that he was also president of the Tri-State area APBA racing chapter back in the '50's, too.

So it's no surprise that among the many wonderful artifacts that he collected in his younger days are, as it turns out, at least 25 vintage outboard motors. I say "at least" because it's not impossible I may yet find one or two more; I thought I was all done with the discovery phase of this particular archaeological excavation, but a couple of weeks ago I moved aside a pile of stuff I'd been kinda working my way around and came across, carefully shrouded in canvas and set to the side on one of those old cast-iron Kiekhaefer motor stands, a 90+%, restoration-quality 1934 Evinrude LightFour!

And that was just lagniappe by then, because what originally started me digging into what I have now gotten deeply seeped in, the whole fascinating culture of post-WWII personal pleasure boating in America, was the first dozen motors I found in the basement and garage, all carefully racked away on their stands waiting to be called back into service at some unknown later date: those nice, sexy green-cowled 20-cc-and-under high-rpm Mercury outboards from back in the day. Yum!

In any event, I found this particular thread because one of the various things I recently found tucked away in a box with many other random things was a cherry-condition Vollrath stainless steel bow light, just like the one that you guys just helped John score for his Cutter. As soon as I saw the red & green lenses I knew it had to be a bow light, and I could tell from the racy styling that it was a totally Sputnik-age, fins-on-the-stern kind of thing. But I wasn't sure just what boat it had originally belonged to until I found this & related threads here on FiberGlassics.

Needless to say, now that I've seen the pics from the rest of the set, I'll be keeping my eyes out for the matching cleats and such to go with it. They're probably here somewhere, ahem. I don't much guess I'll also come across the kind of extra-special Vollrath steering wheel that you guys have been drooling over in these particular Cutter-oriented threads, but ya never know. I've already found one or two other wheels from that same era, so anything is possible.

If I do find anything interesting, I'll be sure to let y'all know. And if there's anything in particular you're questing for, just ping me via the email link here. If I haven't found it already, I still might before all is said and done. I've only now finished totally excavating the garage, and I've only scratched the surface of the much larger basement below. Who knows what other juicy goodies might still be lurking down there, just waiting for the chance to go to a good home...

mloutre,thanks for the email,as you see i have the bowlight thanks to my friends.
i would love to see the pics of that garage and basement with all those beautiful boat parts and motors ,as im sure the rest of us would want to see the place of a classic boaters dream,thanks john