Classic Australian Wooden Power Boats

Reader's Boats

Stormy

Stormy has been a regular feature on the website since its inception and is continuing to take up server space for a couple of reasons, namely, I am the Webmaster so I decide on what goes up and what doesn't and secondly, very few people send anything in to fill these pages.

Stormy and I go back a long way. I learnt to ski behind the boat in the 1960's when the boat was owned by an uncle. As I grew older and started work, I continued water skiing with friends and pretty well forgot about the boat. In the meantime, my uncle was using it less and less until it ended up in the back of a large shed with rubbish piled high on its deck.

As time marched on, I did the normal thing - got married and started to raise a family. In late 1995, my uncle asked me if I would like to take Stormy off his hands. It was a bit of a shock in that I had pretty well forgotten about the boat. After all, it had been locked away in a shed for 22 years! I spoke to the family and we decided we'd see how we liked power boating

The boat came home in a very tired condition. With some reluctance, the old Ford Y block V8 eventually burst into life. A bit of a clean up and a re-varnish of the deck brought some dignity back to the old girl. Wetting out the hull for a couple of weeks saw the planks tighten up nicely.

The first day out was a bit of a disaster. The new electric fuel pump I had fitted was not up to the job and couldn't keep the carburettor float bowls full, meaning as soon as the boat travelled over about 15 mph, it starved for fuel. Worse was to come though. After idling around for a while, the entire contents of the engine sump emptied into the bottom of the boat. At home later, I discovered the oil had leaked through some rust holes  that had formed over the years in the bottom of the sump.

After welding up the holes in the sump and fitting a a larger capacity fuel pump, we used the boat regularly for the next six months. The family enjoyed boating and the novelty of this old wooden boat. It wasn't all that pretty, but it was different and sounded far better than anything else on the lake.

The boat was restored and engine overhauled in 1996 and has been in regular use ever since. It has suffered a few dings and scratches over the years. It is on its third deck since 1996 and recently had some rot in the keel repaired and a split plank replaced,  but is still going strong.

When not being used for water skiing, the boat gets around to as many of the various new boat and wooden boat  shows as I can manage.

Stormy celebrated her 50th birthday in 2005.