OH THAT'S FANTASTIC!!!
When I was a kid about 5 Dad bought a 22’ Bryant from Orin Edson's dealership on Westlake Avenue downtown Seattle. That was right about 1962. That boat was HUGE on a trailer, it looked an awful lot like the 'Atlantic' weekender in your old brochure. It had a red cabin top, a white hull, and a yellow tandem axle trailer. We were moving up from a 14’ aluminum fishing boat. The Bryants were a plywood boat, it looks like the Grady's were better quality with lapstrake planked construction.
The old Bryant had twin 70hp Mercury’s, back when they were painted white. They called them Mickey-mouse outboards because they had no neutral. You started them in forward or reverse, they killed when you pulled back the throttle to neutral. That was a tricky boat to dock, but it ran like stink. When you pulled up to a dock you would put it from forward to reverse and then start them again. Man you had to keep them tuned up good or else!
At the time Dad’s company car was an Oldsmobile Dynamic 88, he had a hitch installed and that was what we towed the boat with. We lived in north Seattle at 175th and I remember walking a trail thru the woods to school, and for second grade I had to go to a new school because they were putting the I5 freeway through those woods we walked through!
That was the boat we took up to Skyline Marina in Anacortes, "Gateway to the San Juans" as they called it. They would sling launch the trailer boats, and the stupid operator picked the boat up off the trailer and dropped the bow on the bulkhead, splitting open the stem and garboard. When it slipped off the sling (those motors were heavy!!) he panicked and dropped it on the outboards – OUCH!!
They were nice enough to loan us a boat to use for the weekend, back then boat insurance was zero-deductible. It was an old wooden boat with an inboard that leaked like a sieve. All night long the bilge pump would come on and by morning the batteries were dead.
Oh my, those were the days, huh???
I REALLY enjoyed the old brochures. I was heavily involved with old wooden boats when I lived up in the NW. I have quite a selection of hand wood-working tools. Built a couple of boats and restored a couple. I’m even pretty handy (was) with marlinspike work.
