Maybe I should have built a little heavier and just skipped the whole trailer thing :-)

Triumph Boats takes pride in their boats, and how tough they are. They have other humorous videos on their site.

Boot Lake Champion from nick zdon on Vimeo. read more »

While touring some of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC the other day (make sure and see that if you haven't), I ran across this ad/picture of an old outboard motor. It was giving examples of old style streamlining, etc. Sometimes I think the older styling was better than the modern stuff... of course that might explain the looks of the boat I chose to build :-)

During my recent travels we stopped at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Tulsa, OK... not where you would expect a large and nice aquarium, but its there :-) Displays are nice, signage very good and informative, with quite an array of sea life to examine. But, that's not what this is about...

One "side display" of the aquarium is the Karl and Beverly White National Fishing Tackle Museum. Now, I'll admit, I nearly didn't even go in... that's not really my thing. Anyhow, we wound up wondering through. I never imagined there were that many types of reels, rods, lures, whatnots to collect. In the back of the room were a couple of small boats and several outboard motors from the early 20th century. One was of particular interest to me.

The sign read:

Submergible Electric Motor Co.

Submergible Outboard
1902

The Submergible Electric Motor was the 1st commercial outboard motor.
To reach a top speed of 4.5 miles per hour, the motor required a bank of
batteries which weighed about 500 pounds.

 

And we think we've come so far :-)

Looks a lot like the modern pod type electrics, or trolling motors, doesn't it?