Skagit 31 Sighted!

[TheBronze]

Now that I have your attention!

I recently purchased a Popular Boating from 1959. This thing is packed with ads. One that immediately caught my eye was for Owens Corning Fiberglass. One of the boats they featured in the ad was this lovely girl!

[McSkagit Tim Jones]

Yes, john, that's Saratogan hull 2. I have a couple copies of that ad. Those old magazines are great. I have a Boat Show issue of Sea and Pacific Motor Boat from 1958 as I remember. It's full of ads. What surprises me is how many of the companies advertising then are still around today.

Bill Roberts gave me a hard bound technical book on fiberglass published by Owens-Corning about 1958. Skagit Plastics provided some of the material and photos for the book which is an inch and a half thick.

I hear a lot of people say, "Oh, they didn't know how strong fiberglass was, so they overbuilt everything". They knew how strong it was. Back then the materials were cheap. What they didn't know was how long the composite would last in day-to-day use, constant flexing and sun and salt environments.

What I learned on my Saratogan is that a lot of the secondary bonds had to be replaced. I'm talking about tabbing. Connections between the hull and bulkheads, interior components, etc. That part was time consuming.

Great find!

Cheers,

Tim

[TheBronze]

Tim, regarding the tabbing. I agree. That was one of the items of attention on the Marathon when I went through it. The 404 had the same, but I was ripping it all out anyway.