Puget Sound Outboard Club, Circa 1955...

[Marty Loken (Norseboater)]

In doing library research recently, I ran across this amazing photo, take on May Day, 1955, showing a rendezvous of the Puget Sound Outboard Club on a Hat Island beach, near Everett. It's impossible to count them, but the caption says there are 109 boats within the sweep of the photo--the biggest gathering in club history, and maybe ever, among Puget Sound cruising clubs. (More than 600 men, women and children participated in the huge beach gathering.) Obviously, this was in the heydey of outboard cruising clubs...so we've got a ways to go before we have on-the-water events this large (!) Who can identify the greatest number of boats in the photo, by manufacturer? We're betting that almost all of them were built right here in the Puget Sound area.

- Marty

[timw]

Wow, that is a neat photo, I will save it, thanks Marty.

[Stephen Tweit]

Marty...What library ???? I have spent a lot of time at the Tacoma library with very little information. ......... Steve

[Marty Loken (Norseboater)]

Steve -

I'm doing most of the research at the Seattle Public Library; the U.W.'s Special Collections department also has a lot of good stuff on early Northwest boatbuilders.

All of the research has been for a presentation scheduled for the Wet Edge symposium (late April)...but registration for the event is going very slowly in this economy, so there's a chance the event will be modified or scrubbed. Either way, I'll post a bunch of images on this forum in coming months, showing boats designed and built in the Northwest between 1920 and the mid-1960's.

- Marty

[Steve_Kiesel]

Marty, even if the symposium gets scrubbed, we could always re-schedule the presentation as a club get together. Naturally we all enjoy the old boat history. Plus it's nice to have dry land outings where we can all chew the fat a bit more. Have fun with the research.

[halffast32]

Good idea Steve. Marty, you can get your presentation together and use us as a practice audience!;) Always interested in local boat history (and local history in general). The more we learn about the history of northwest boat builders, the more it will be preserved for everyone. I feel that alot of local history is being lost (both physically and intellectually) as not too many people spend the time to learn it and pass it on. Thanks for your efforts. :)

[Marty Loken (Norseboater)]

Even if the April symposium is scrubbed, I'll continue the research and put together some kind of presentation for Northwest Classic Boat Club members. (But it probably won't be finished until this Fall, since the research is unbelievably time-consuming. A full day at the library only gets me through about 3-4 years of history, on average, and we're trying to cover a 40-year span of boat designs. No complaints--I'm loving the project--but it takes awhile.)

In the meantime, I'll continue posting snippets that turn up during the research.

- Marty

[McSkagit Tim Jones]

Wow! What a cool photo! Now that's a serious rendezvous! The color photo of the rendezvous in Friday Harbor a couple years later must have been big, too, with 1800 pounds of salmon B'BQ'd. Those were the days...

McSkagit

Photo courtesy of Bob and Ira Spring

[Marty Loken (Norseboater)]

Tim -

...and another great, old photo! Thanks for posting.

I'll see if I can find more shots from the Puget Sound Outboard Club get-togethers, and will post anything I come across. Yes, those were sure the golden days of outboard cruising, although I've come across a ton of information and photos on some of the first serious outboard cruiser designs that were built in the Northwest, starting in the mid-1920's and running into the early 1930's. When Elto introduced their biggest-ever 22-hp Quad model in 1928, it seemed to change everything...inspiring a flurry of new outboard cruisers in the 18-22-foot range. I'll post an article on the subject pretty soon, accompanied by lots of photos and drawings.

- Marty

[McSkagit Tim Jones]

Marty,
As I recall Elto was an acronym for Evinrude Light Twin Outboard. I wasn't aware that 22 HP was a quad. My dad came in second in the 1937 Sammamish Slough race with his 14 foot Wecco Clipper powered by a 22 Elto.

I'll see if I can find the pics.. Think it was 37, might have been 1938...

McSkagit

[Yardman]

Tim, Marty, Light Twin indicates two cylinders I think, what does Quad refer to? - Ross