" holy grail " boat finds

[Bushwacker]

Originally Posted by boataddict

can any one share how to post a new post? I'm new.

Just pick the sub-forum you want to post on, scroll to the bottom of it and click on the New Thread button. FYI, posting a new question on an existing thread is called "Highjacking a thread" and not considered good etiquette on most forums, but I'm sure you only did it because you didn't see the new thread button, so all is forgiven! Welcome aboard!

Terry, your story about the government competition is generally correct, except the boat in question was a Moesly SeaCraft 21. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was in 1961, and Moesly didn't build the 19' Bowrider till '65 and the 20 CC till '67. All the boats were I/O's, I believe Carl said the govt. specified the same big block Ford engines for all the competitors to insure it was a fair test. I thought the other boats (I understood there at least a couple other competitors) were something like Bertram/Donzi/Formula types with successful ocean racing history; probably deeper V hulls that obviously did not have the SeaCraft's load carrying and low speed planing ability! I think the boats were used to run agents in and out of Cuba in the mid-late 60's.

They definitely used the SeaCraft 21. A colleague of mine (who owned a 21 himself and who's dad was the original owner of my Seafari!), once saw a 21 in the shop at local SeaCraft dealer Brown & Hauptner marine that had a bunch of strange looking steel reinforcement up under the front deck. Turned out to be a mount for a 50 cal. machine gun! My other friend Bob that owned the Moesly 21 "Unohu" pictured below says he saw another one of the government boats that had been run up on a reef down in the Keys somewhere. Bob ordered his boat at the '65 Miami show but later got a call from Carl, apologizing because he couldn't deliver the one Bob ordered for some time due to a large backlog of orders from that 'special contract'! So he offered Bob a good deal on the display model from the boat show, which had a lot more "goodies" on it than the one he'd ordered, so he jumped on that offer!