Here's the latest
Project
An 8' hydroplane
Hal Kelly's "Racing 8"
from Clark Craft
Here's a few video clips!!!
It's tough running a boat like this on the Hudson River
any time other than very early in the morning or late in the afternoon
(read: just about dusk! haha). There's usually not as much large boat traffic
where I launch due to the shallower water on the flats and the fact that
there's no docks here, just a launch ramp. We got there later than I wanted
to this day, so I couldn't even get any good full laps in between the boats
going by in the channel and rolling good sized wakes into shore. Small
wakes aren't the problem, they're drivable, that bigger wakes from cruisers,
barges, etc are another story as can be seen in clip 3.
Clip
1 : Got a little air under the hydro just when I ran through a wake
(it was starting to get pretty windy), THAT'S an odd feeling!!
Clip
2 : This is the shortest clip, just a quick pass by the camera
Clip
3 : The morning we shot this video, there was more traffic on the River
than usual. This is a longer clip, running an 8' hydro through the return
wake (waves bouncing back off the shore) of a cruiser probably not a good
idea! I saw the wake, but it didn't look bad, so I kept going. The first
few waves were OK, I'd been running through small wakes all morning, the
last few were a bit bigger than I thought!You can see some of the other
boats in the backround. It could've been worse, knees and back a bit sore
from the bouncing, but no damage to the boat.