I have always been into boats. My brother Rick and I started to make our own boats at the age of about 7or 8 on dad’s building sites out of framing pine. We used to make pretend engines and drivers out of wood and paint them up and then run up and down the river with fishing line tied to them. From then on both Rick and I wished for a remote control boat nearly every birthday and Christmas.
Over the years, Rick and I have spent hours in the shed building different styles of remote control boats out of balsa wood, ply wood and fiberglass and modified them to go faster. We would take them down to the river and race each other after school and on the weekends.
It seems that not much has changed. Except the amount of money we spend on them now days. In our time away from racing we still enjoy making our own boats and trying to ‘out do’ each other by making them go faster.
While on holiday in America at the beginning of this year, Rick and I visited a number of Remote Control Boat shops. The stores were amazing! They had everything related to RC boats that you could ever need – it was like Christmas! I brought back home a lot of gear including a fiberglass deep vee hull, a race engine and enough running gear to fit out another two boats. I spray painted the hull and stickered it up with a few of my personal sponsors.
I am currently working on that same boat as you can see in the below photographs. This involves fitting the hull with steering, engine mounts plus water and fuel systems. I hope to finish it in the next week so I can put it in the river for the first time. I am expecting it will do about 55 mph.
I will put some more photos on the website when the boat is finished.
