Hydro plans

[Waunnaboat]

Hello.  I am toying with the idea of building 1 (or possibly up to 4 if I want to race friends/family) small, under 10 feet hydros of the sort that at least the bottom can be built with regular, marine-grade plywood as opposed to hard-to-find and expensive mahogany plywood.  I was thinking of possibly building a mini-most boat (not sure if you could really call it a hydroplane), but I would prefer to build a plan with the sort of flying saucer shape that is common on hydros of the 50’s if there are plans without the use of mahogany.  I do not mind working with cloth decking but would like to keep this project under 100 hours of physical construction minus painting for each boat, and under $400 per boat.  It might be a bit of overkill in the mini-most in particular, but I was thinking of putting stock Mercury KE-7 or KG-7s on said hydros if this comes into fruition.

"Outboards seem to multiply exponentially..........I find that for every finished project, there are two more waiting to be completed."

[outbdnut2]

I bought full-size minimost blueprints online that cut down the build time – don’t know if they are still available or where.

Lots of free hydro plans at this site:

https://boatsport.org/kelly.html

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Waunnaboat

[outbdnut2]

I’ve built minimosts with my son, and another with my grandson, both when they were 14.  Started them with a 6 HP Evinrude until they learned how to take various waves.  The 6 would plane it if you leaned on the deck while it was picking up speed.   Used to run a KE7 on the first one.  Have run a 1958 10 Johnson and a 1989 15 Johnson on them.  The KE7 was nice because you didn’t need a fuel tank in the boat, but needed more frequent TLC to keep it running.  The newer motors were nice for kids learning because they had a gearshift  so could start in neutral. Since these stock motors usually end up running above max RPM ratings, I double the oil in the gas and go one heat range colder on the spark plugs.

Dave

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Waunnaboat

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