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View Full Version : My 1967 Belmont Flatbottom story



JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 02:33 PM
This is the story of my Dad’s boat – and me growing up. Some of you may have seen the latter part of this story as it developed last year. I was surprised at how many other boaters, sons and daughters are out there who have shared a similar experience, or wish they had. As of last year, I have joined the ranks of those who want to preserve these boats, this sport and pass these memories down to new generations.

Dad’s boat is parked in my garage now; but it isn’t just a boat. I recently re-wrote this story so that I could share it with family, friends and to capture this history for my kid and her family some day. Last weekend at the 2014 Needles Hot Boat Show, I was encouraged to share it here. This is probably longer than any post or thread you have ever read. It wasn’t written to be in a forum and frankly, I’m not interested in editing it. To help with your digestion, I will try to insert the appropriate photos where they belong and submit it in a few parts over a couple days. So if you are interested, here it is:

In September 1965, Dad brought home a big wood boat. I had never seen a boat up close and it looked huge to me sitting on the trailer at almost 9 years old. We didn’t have any big toys or family hobbies and money always seemed to be a concern so I was shocked. Dad announced that we were all going to start water skiing. I had only seen pictures of my crazy Uncle John skiing behind his big Chris Craft so naturally I was very excited with this news.

The neighbors all came over to see it and Dad was very proud. Through those conversations I learned that this was a Belmont Boat and I was amazed that it was made right here in Fresno, out on Belmont Avenue. The owner and builder was apparently Dad’s friend. I was impressed. We made several trips to Millerton Lake that summer. The lake was only about a half-hour away but it was a whole new world for me. I remember feeling sort of swallowed up by the interior of the boat and how hard it was to climb up the little ladder that hooked over the side. I tried really hard to learn to ski but just couldn’t get up. All too soon, that summer was over and I would have to wait for months to try again.

It seems like immediately after getting the Belmont, Dad and I began spending lots of time out at the boat shop. The owner, Smitty Weeks, was several years older than Dad. He showed us all around they shop and we got to see boats being made. There were boats and old car parts everywhere. Smitty also restored old cars, one of which was a Franklin he drove to our house once. Smitty really treated me special and I loved my time out there. After a while, I had the run of the place, unsupervised while Smitty and Dad were talking or working on something. I remember every corner of every shed and all the smells. There was one building that smelled real strong and every time I came home from crawling around on stuff in there Mom had to pull tons of small itchy little fiberglass needles out of my arms, abdomen and thighs. Then, after all day of playing around at the shop, Smitty, Dad and I would ride in Smitty’s old Willy’s Jeep to the hardtop races at Kearney Bowl. Those are fond memories. We went to those races for many years until they closed down that track.

Based on our old photos, I am told that the Belmont was probably built in the late 1950’s, was 17 feet long and powered by a Cadillac with two 4-barrel carbs. The next summer, I finally got up on double skis and couldn’t get enough behind the boat. I remember Dad teaching all of our neighbors and other friends to ski behind it and spending every weekend at the lake.
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HB Vic
03-02-2014, 02:52 PM
Now that is classic stuff right there, thank you so much for sharing and good to meet you in Needles.

Please continue to share and let us know what's going on with the boat today.

Great stuff, thank you!

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 02:52 PM
Pg 2
Dad loved his boat, but he had a wandering eye for a newer style. He and Mom had been going to the boat drags all over California and he wanted to race. He brought home lots of photos of cool flatbottoms and hydros. He decided he wanted a fiberglass flatbottom hot boat. I had only seen a couple flatbottoms at Millerton Lake. Out on the water, they looked like Dad’s boat would if it was sinking but they were loud and fast. I remember the first one I got to see up close on the launch. It was bad ass!

Dad and I began spending even more time out at the boat shop. I knew something was gong on because he kept having quiet conversations with Smitty. Then he would have quiet conversations at home with Mom. I remember how excited he was when he finally explained to me that he was going to get one of Smitty’s new 19-foot fiberglass flatbottom hulls. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t remember that we had ever owned anything that was new.

In late 1966, Smitty took Dad’s hull out of the new mold. It was pitch black with silver metal flake and looked wicked and fast just sitting upside down on the wood frame out back. Dad remembers that Smitty kept the 1st hull, he got the 3rd and Bud Johnson got the 4th. He can’t remember who got the second or any others.

Dad wanted to build the new boat himself and is still very proud that he did so today. He has always been a hands on, do it yourselfer and very conscious of his responsibilities. I suspect it was a challenge that excited him but was also a way to justify to himself the expenses for a new toy while having four kids at home to raise.

While the hull was upside down out back at the shop, Dad began working on it with Smitty’s supervision and tools. Dad drilled all of the holes and mounted the underwater hardware: a 10-degree strut, two skags and the cavitation plate. Meanwhile, another friend, Ed Wills, built Dad his Mr. Ed trailer. They flipped the boat over onto the trailer and Dad brought it home to his 1-1/2 car garage. I helped him scoot the trailer around trying to figure out how to fit it into the garage. It just barely fit in there sideways which took some effort with the tandem axles.

I know Dad was a frustrated racer and wanted to build a boat like Smitty’s with numbers on the side, zoomies or big headers hanging out over the transom coming off of a blown hemi, but this was a compromise. The only “hot rod” he could afford, justify and use with the whole family, was going to be a dutiful, dependable ski boat. That was his focus as he chose the parts to use and chose his interior design.

I believe that Dad got or ordered most of the other parts he needed from Smitty. As they began to arrive Dad and our neighbor Wayne, began assembling the boat. They would get home from work and go out to the garage every night and all weekend. Wayne was very industrious and talented. He was known in the neighborhood for all of the amazing things he built in his garage. This is a guy who wanted a cab-over camper for his pickup so he made one from scratch in his garage and it was better than anything you could buy. He had every tool imaginable and he had cans and cans full of assorted nuts, bolts, washers and pieces of metal he brought home from where ever he found them. A look inside the boat will show evidence of this. Keep in mind – neither of these guys had ever built a boat before.

Again, based on photos, they began by drilling a lot more holes in the nearly-virgin hull. They mounted the steering, deck tachometer and the ignition switch. Dad likes the clean simple look so there are no other holes in the dash. Then they plumbed the dual fiberglass fuel tanks. As a family ski boat with a stock motor, he decided he didn’t need an adjustable cavitation plate so he saved some money with a fixed set up and drilled all of the holes to mount the turnbuckles to the transom. On the trailer, they installed all of the lighting and electrical and Dad built padded vinyl trailer steps and fender pads that looked pretty rich. He loved the clean look of the trailer and didn’t want to put the license plate on it so he mounted it on a fold up hide-away frame that we often forgot to pull down.
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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 03:22 PM
So this is Smitty Weeks, owner of Belmont Boats, in his race boat #269 - I dont remember if this was his #1 hull or if it was a later one - he had several

Then there is Bud Johnson and his #4 hull - Mr Runner - which he sank by the dam at Millerton a short time later
He immediately replaced it with Mr Runner 2

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 03:40 PM
Here is another later photo of Bud Johnson with Mr Runner 2

A couple photos of Smitty Weeks' son, Lynn Weeks, when he was racing the 269 Belmont
It cracks me up how Smitty wrote on the boat "Owner - Smitty Weeks" to keep Lynn in check
Lynn is a few years older than me and I was jealous as hell of him - he got to live next to the shop and race the boats
Later took over the business until health issues left him unable to continue
I used to follow him around and drive him nuts!
He became very good at making fiberglass slot racer bodies and he also learned how to rewind those electric motors somehow to hop them up
He was a known threat at the indoor track in a little shop behind the Triple J Market at Cedar and Ashlan in Fresno
Dad recently reminded me that Lynn bought an old funeral hurst from one of the funeral homes near the shop. He turned it into his TOW RIG for the race boat
What a sight at the races - I sure wish I had photos of that
Dad went with Lynn on one of his many runs down to Long Beach to pick up Holman-Moody race motors for the boats
He fixed the casket rails so he could mount 3 of the motors in a row back there
Dad said they sure got a lot of looks out on the road
What a crack up

And a couple examples of what it was like out back at the Belmont Boat shop where I spent a lot of time

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 03:44 PM
Shop Pics

I'm guessing that is the hurst behind the blue boat, over by the fence, before it got painted up
I handt noticed that before now

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 04:13 PM
To maximize space for seating, skis, vests, ropes, coolers, etc., he used simple back-to-back bench seats with a center cover over the driveline and alternator from the motor to the back seat. It comfortably seats 6 adults (or 2 adults and 4 or 5 skinny little kids). To keep the driveline low enough to allow for a rear bench seat, he installed a Hallibrand parallel shaft gearbox (V-drive). I’m not sure if he was aware of just how miserably loud the straight-cut gears in this box are or if he chose that particular unit to save money. As with most v-drive boats, there is no reverse gear: it is either in gear (forward) or out of gear, requiring exceptional spatial awareness and good aim maneuvering around other boats, docks, skiers, rocks, trailers, etc. Smitty’s setup here was to use a 2-piece driveline out of old Studebakers for this application. The alternator is bolted to the inside of a stringer with the v-belt simply spinning on the rear driveline tube.

Smitty loved to use big Cadillac or Lincoln motors in the bigger boats. I’m not sure what he put in the first flatbottoms but I know they were not Oldsmobile’s. Yet, that is what Dad bought. Dad had an uncle that I don’t remember ever meeting, who owned the Cadillac / Oldsmobile dealership in Fresno. Dad was able to order a brand new 425 cubic inch big block motor from the factory through Uncle Phelan and I remember it showed up in a wood crate. With the low strung driveline setup, they mounted the motor very low in the boat at the front mount and just far enough forward to allow for a long, thin battery to be accessible behind it. According to photos, the first carb on the motor was a Rochester. In 1968, it is the Carter AFB. Dad was very proud of the black wrinkle paint he used on the motor, which is now pretty tired. He also loved the clear, see-thru spark plug wires he made up back then because they matched the metal flake silver trim on the hull.

In a matter of months, everything came together and they registered the boat and trailer in early 1967. Dad, Wayne and probably Smitty made several test trips to get the carb dialed in and all of the bugs out. The flat replaced the older Belmont as our daily ski boat, which Dad sold in July 1967. I remember Dad being disgusted when he heard that the guy who bought the wood boat abused the hell out of it up at Bass Lake until it was junked. There are a lot of us that wish we could get our hands on one of those now!

I remember the first time I finally got to go out for a ride in it after they had it all dialed in. When we got outside the 5-mile zone and he started to speed up, I was slapping his arm trying to tell him something was wrong. There was a terrible noise. It was so loud I didn’t understand how he wasn’t aware of it. He slowed back down and tried to explain to me that is how it is supposed to sound. Bullshit, Smitty’s didn’t sound like that! Ok, so I didn’t score any points with that one and I didn’t get any better at keeping my thoughts to myself for another 40 years or so. I’m still practicing.

For many years, we spent all day every Saturday and Sunday at the lake. Dad, Wayne and I would launch the Belmont and Wayne’s Spiko as soon as the lake’s gates opened at 6 a.m. and head for the cove by the dam. Wayne got the bright yellow, 17-foot Spiko flatbottom with a 413 Chrysler, right before they finished building the Belmont. Mom and Vivian would bring the other 6 kids and all the tables, chairs, stove, food, coolers and picnic stuff and park at the lowest picnic sight table in the cove. We would beach the boats in the cove and all the other neighbors, friends and relatives would start showing up until we had full control of the entire cove and the other 3 tables all the way back up to the road. Both boats were constantly pulling skiers, coming in for more and going back out. They say Dad taught over 100 people how to ski. We skied till it was too rough in the late morning or early afternoon and then we would go out on big tire inner tubes or a round piece of plywood dad painted that I could stand up and spin around on until I got bored. Basically these were just tools the Dad and Wayne used to try to wear me out so I wouldn’t want to ski so long when the water calmed down again late in the afternoon. I remember there were some other late sleeping park visitors complaining that we were always taking up this particular cove and the picnic tables every weekend and that we never seemed to leave. The Rangers told them to get there first if they wanted it. Typically we wouldn’t pack up until some time after dark. I remember this mainly because of the bats. Ya, the flying kind that would swoop down toward your head. There were 100’s of them there every night and Wayne had us all convinced they were vampires and little kids were their favorite to snack on.

Note re photos: The Aug 67 Terri skiing pic shows the old Rochester carb Dad's fancy see-thru spark plug wires
The 8/68 pic of Mom climbing back in the boat show the Carter with Dad's custom made spacer/adaptor
The pics of upholstery/driveline/alternator/battery were taken last year and used to show what I was referring to above

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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 04:17 PM
The Millerton Lake weekends
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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 04:22 PM
Wayne's Spiko
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HB Vic
03-02-2014, 04:27 PM
Where was this pic taken??
http://www.hotboat.com/frm/attachment.php?attachmentid=35298&stc=1&d=1393799526

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 04:36 PM
Every year my crazy Uncle John, Aunt Anne and my 2 cousins loaded up with several dirt bikes and pulled his big Chris Craft up to Shasta for 2 weeks. He got Dad to bring all of us up there with the new Belmont for the first time in August of 1967. We stayed in Cabin 18 above the Salt Creek Boat Dock every summer for many years. We got to know the people who worked in the area or had the same vacation every year. I had several boats to ski behind all day and a couple of professional slalom skiers to learn from. Those were the best vacations of my life.

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you dreamed about it every night? That is how bad I wanted to drive the Belmont from the first day I saw it. Dad never let me drive it. EVER. I saw Wayne drive it. Even Mom got to drive it when Dad wanted to ski. What the hell? Looking back, this was probably a good decision on his part. He was just taking proper care of his hot rod. Otherwise, it may not have survived so long.

Today, at 57 years old, I find this interesting for some reason. I figured out that in 1966, Dad was 36 years old and had four kids ranging from 1-10 years old. I’m thinking they must have only just discovered what had been causing those repeated pregnancies. I am the oldest and probably would have been the only if he had known what a pain in his ass I was going to be. Back then, it seemed like having such a cool toy at only 36 years old was a real privilege and I was proud as hell to show off his hot rod.

As I got older, my head got harder and my relationship with Dad got really strained. I moved in with my Great Grandma out in the country during the summer and picked grapes for money. I learned how to drive in her white, 1959, 2-door hardtop Cadillac at 15 years old. I had to come back to town when school started so I started living with friends until I got my first apartment a couple years later at 17. I worked after school and on weekends to pay for my apartment, gas for my VW bug (that was made up of 5 different crashed donors) and I ate hamburger and potatoes on bread every day. While I was proving my point, the rest of the family kept enjoying skiing together for many years. I took up skiing with other friends or hitching rides off the docks when I had days off because there was no work. I quit hitching ski rides after two funny guys towed me out to the middle of Bass Lake, disconnected my rope and drove off with my cooler full of beer. As each of my siblings grew older, got busy and moved out, Dad made fewer and fewer trips out on the boat. Wayne sold the Spiko and later moved to Idaho where he is now. I know for a lot of years, he only took it out once or twice with Mom, just to keep it going. After about a decade, our relationship improved as I matured at a stubborn pace. By then, the boating days were over and the Belmont was a trophy in his garage. I was married with a kid and a job that seemed to consume my life. There is a song that makes me think of this time in our lives – about a son growing up and not having time to spend with his father – Cat’s In The Cradle by Harry Chapin. Wish I had listened to the words back then.

Dad sorta retired and they moved to Nipomo, near Santa Maria. I offered to “store” the Belmont but he took it with him. In 2000, at 70 years old, he drug it out to some lake over an hour away. The gas in the tanks and carb was bad from sitting so long so it ran like crap. The water was really rough and they had a miserable trip. He realized he was done with it. He went home and wrote me a letter telling me I could have the boat. I still have the letter.

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GotHalos
03-02-2014, 06:07 PM
Thanks for sharing. :thumbup:

Great pictures!

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 06:22 PM
Thanks
Just gettin to the good part

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 06:31 PM
MY BOAT NOW
Holy crap that just doesn’t sound right. It is still Dad’s boat. I’m just getting to use it now. The timing wasn’t great for me when Dad gave me the Belmont. I didn’t have a vehicle that could tow it, money for gas or time off work. I was trying to figure out how to raise my own kid, while fixing up the house we bought. Still, I was excited when it arrived. It took me all weekend to make enough room to fit it into the garage. The next weekend, I removed the Carter carb and rebuild it. Under the carb, I found an interesting spacer Dad had created to solve two problems. It provided the necessary clearance for the backwards-mounted carb’s throttle linkage to operate and it served as an adaptor from a spread bore manifold to a square bore carb. It was made up of several alternating aluminum plates of varying thickness and hand cut gasket material. He used his handheld Craftsman jigsaw, which I still have and use, to cut the rectangles to match the outside dimension of the carb base. He then cut out the center area of each plate to create the transition from the spread to the square bore. When I say he cut the center out, I mean he drilled holes at the inside corners and then used his jigsaw to cut between the drilled holes and then used a hand file to clean it all up. This is like something from the dark ages, but it worked great. Pretty damn cool. Problems solved. Although there were no signs that this setup ever created a problem, I replaced it with a borrowed, yet inexpensive, mass-produced spacer plate readily available from your auto parts store these days.

The factory installed vacuum distributor with points and a condenser inside are still there and looked good. I put new fuel in the fiberglass tanks, changed the oil, put bearing buddies on the trailer, lubed them and washed everything real good. Then I ran out and bought skis for my 14-year-old daughter, Jenna.

I got a friend to pull it up to Millerton for us. It started up but wouldn’t run right on the water under a load except at idle or wide open. Kinda hard to ski that way. Nobody could get up behind it. The next couple weekends were the same and I got too frustrated and parked it. In 2007 I bought Dad’s old pickup and gave the boat another try but had the same problems. I really wanted to teach Jenna to ski so in 2009 I tried again with the same results. The hot rod neighbor guys couldn’t fix the carb either. They told me it was too distressed and needed to be replaced. I could barely afford gas and couldn’t afford a new carb. I parked the boat again and considered selling it because I had a couple guys that wanted it. Over the years, even Dad kept telling me I should just sell it because I needed the room to park and work on the motorcycles.

2012 was a busy year. I had recently retired and had almost 30 years of unfinished projects piled up in the garage. It had gotten so bad that many people who had been in my once shop-like organized garage didn’t even know there was a 19-foot boat out there. A couple years after Mom passed away, Dad moved back to Fresno to be near the 3 of us kids still living here. He is still struggling with his loss after 55 years of life with his best friend. He hadn’t been feeling well for a while and we were all getting pretty worried. Jenna, who had always been attached to my hip, graduated with a Masters Degree, got married and moved to Texas. She actually got married a year early because she wanted to make sure Dad would be part of it. I rebuilt everything on my 1992 Harley except the motor and took off for 50 days with a buddy on my retirement ride that we had planned in 1997. We saw 36 States and Washington DC (bringing my total on this bike to 46 now), covering 11,500 miles. My bike rolled over 100,000 on the way home and needs engine work after the 94-degree/98% humidity we hit with the air-cooled motor in DC and Key West. Long rides give me a lot of time to think, whether I want to or not. It is either that or let the demons run amuck. I decided I needed to get Dad to the lake and let him drive his old hot rod once more, whether he wanted to get up off the couch or not. I came home motivated. In the meantime, we found Dad a GREAT doctor at the Sansum Clinic who figured out that his medications were causing him to feel so bad. He quickly improved and seems pretty damn healthy for an old guy. Again, life kept trying to get away from me and distractions delayed my plan. Summer was over again.

JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 06:38 PM
The ride

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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 06:49 PM
JUNE 2013
Finally, I dug the boat out from under the piles of Costco goods, bike stuff, house stuff and got it out in the sun. When I pulled it out of the garage, it left most of the old bias ply tires built in 1992 on the floor and I found that neighborhood cats had gotten into the garage and pissed on the rims, rusting them beyond repair. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to keep the boat after taking Dad out in it so I found a good deal on a set of modern trailer wheels and tires (This I regret. I will replace them again with era-specific wheels and white walls like Dad originally had). I don’t have a great sense of smell after 5 or 6 concussions so I was surprised to find that the cats had also pissed on the floors in the boat. It took some real effort to get that crystalized mess off of the resin and those wild little kitties have been relocated to new zip codes. I cleaned and polished up every inch of the boat and trailer, inside and out. I checked all the nuts and bolts, cleaned the upholstery and rebuilt the fender pads the same way Dad had done.

I vaguely recalled that there were some miscellaneous parts in two cardboard boxes marked “Boat Stuff” that I got from Dad with the boat. I hadn’t paid much attention to them before. They ended up being like treasure chests. Inside, I found a new old stock AC Delco PF-30 oil filter with the old blue and white design, four sets of AC spark plugs in different heat ranges, a couple sets of points, a bunch of old Rochester and Carter carburetor jets, a new impellor and several gaskets, a sheet of gasket material, a cavitation rod seal, a couple turnbuckles and some other stuff. The best part was the 3x5 metal recipe card box. This contained several documents and receipts, hand-written diagrams of how to wire the boat and the Olds factory “Pull” and “Deliver” tags that were stapled to the engine crate, designating that it be delivered minus exhaust manifolds, as ordered.

I got the oil filter, a set of plugs and points out of the box and installed them after sucking the oil out of the plug hole Wayne welded into the side of the stock automotive oil pan. I borrowed an old Holley carb from one of my hot rod neighbors and rebuilt it. I changed the water pump impellor, water hoses, fuel filter and filled the tanks with new fuel. To date, this motor has more hours on it than I could count and has never been touched.

On June 27, 2013, I put it in the water and it ran GREAT! To this point, my plan was a secret. Dad had no idea I had been working on the boat or planned to take him to the lake. I was afraid he would just refuse to go so after polishing it all up I drug it to his house. He was shocked and said he didn’t remember it ever looking that good before. I asked him to go to the lake with me that day and several times a week after that. He always gave me excuses that he was busy, going out of town, had a doctor appointment or didn’t feel good. Sometimes I’m a bit slow, but after two months of this, I started thinking Dad was reluctant to go out on the boat with me. I couldn’t figure out if this was because being in the boat for the first time without Mom going was too depressing, or, because he was just scared to death that my driving would send him to join Mom. Hey, look, it’s not my fault. He never taught me to drive it! I finally had my younger sis work on him until he broke. She doesn’t take any shit from anyone; not even Dad. She convinced him to go so that she, and I, could ski! WTF? Ski? Who said anything about me on a ski? I hadn’t skied in about 20 years due to many injuries I suffered over the years, not to mention my new sumo wrestling physique. Well, whatever works. I got some old skies out, cleaned off the dusty vests and on August 27th, we headed up to Millerton.

What a GREAT and rewarding day. It turned out to be all I ever hoped for. Over the years, it was hard to get Dad to smile when I was around. I caused him a bit of grief on a regular basis. When he climbed back into his boat on the lake that day, I actually saw his TEETH! It took me a minute to figure out how I could see them. Hell, it was because he was grinning! I didn’t know he even had teeth, let alone knew how to grin. It was so cool. I just stared at him and tried to burn that image into my memory. He was obviously excited but something else was odd about what I was seeing. He had climbed into the back seat! Ok, whatever. I didn’t say anything. Maybe I just need to give him a break and let him soak it all in slowly. After all, he is 83 years old.

So I took it easy, warming up his antique motor real nice and slow while slowly cruising out to find the good skiing water. I stopped and sis got ready to "try" to ski. I stood up from the driver’s seat and told Dad he had to drive. He just had a blank look on his face so I told him I don’t know how to pull a skier because he had never let me drive. He looked a bit confused for a second and it hit me then that I don’t think he thought I was going to let him drive his old boat! He didn’t say a word but got right up in the seat real quick. Glad I was out of the way or I would have gone overboard. As soon as he did, you could see it all come back to him. He looked like he belonged there. He looked really happy. Sis got in and he pulled her right up. She really skied well for a few minutes before she was too tired to continue. Then came another big moment in the same day. I got up and skied. I felt right at home. I still know how to do it. Unfortunately, I’m not strong enough to do it like before. I only lasted a few minutes but what a kick!

Then Dad drove around to a back part of the lake, just cruising and taking it all in. Sis and me were secretly taking photos of him while he was driving (he isn’t much for posing) and in a couple of them you can see he is just digging it. Sis was able to force him to sit and look at the camera a couple times and then he asked her if she wanted to ski again. She was pooped but could tell he wanted to keep this thing going so she got in and got right back up.

Dad really had a great time. Sis told him we need to come back at least once a week now that we are skiing again and he didn’t argue. I told him I want him to teach my buddy's kids to ski and he said to call when we are ready. WAY more than I expected.

THIS WAS THE BEST DAY I can remember.

Dad went up with Terri and I several more times before the end of the year and obviously had a blast. He pulled me skiing 5 times and I only hurt one shoulder and one knee besides the other strains! It was worth it. He is now 84 and still healthy. I have plans to try and heal and maybe even get in better shape to be able to let him pull me skiing as much as he wants this year (2014), if we have any water to play in. Wish me luck.

As far as the next generation goes, let me say I am working on it. I had the Belmont in the water 32 times last year. Of those, about half of the trips included different people who had never been in a boat or at least not a flatbottom v-drive. Some of them were impressionable young people. I met lots of folks who shared that the time they spent with their family in their boat was the best memory they have. Why not pass it on and keep on sharing the experience with others like Dad did for so many years. When Jenna and Brandon came home for a visit from Texas last summer, I took them out on the boat for a crash course and advised them that the Belmont belongs to them next. So no, it is not for sale.

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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 06:57 PM
more pics

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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 07:00 PM
more pics

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JusTrouble
03-02-2014, 07:03 PM
Dad in the Belmont in 1967

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Me in the Dad's all originalBelmont in 2013

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Mrs.K034
03-02-2014, 07:22 PM
Very cool story!! Thanks so much for sharing! :)

Menace Marine
03-02-2014, 08:31 PM
Best thing I've seen on this site so far. Reminds me a lot of my childhood. Don't ever sell that boat.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

HotWater
03-02-2014, 10:44 PM
Awesome story! We should meet up and go to the lake this summer.

JusTrouble
03-03-2014, 06:58 AM
Awesome story! We should meet up and go to the lake this summer.


Sounds like a plan HotWater!
Thanks to all.

Eli
03-03-2014, 08:00 AM
👍


Sent from my Bat Cave

K-034
03-03-2014, 10:51 AM
That is a great story, Candace was reading it to me the whole way down desert center, I never turned the radio on once. Thanks for sharing

ptc
03-03-2014, 01:58 PM
http://www.hotboat.com/frm/attachment.php?attachmentid=35363&d=1393811723

JT - this is the WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER photo!!!! says it all in one shot! great story

Sharp shooter
03-03-2014, 06:12 PM
This thread delivers! From the story to the pics to what the future holds it's all good!!! JT, your story is what it's all about imo. Thanks for taking the time to post all of this and please keep adding to the thread when motivated. It's the first place I'll go on this site.:thumbup:

poncho
03-04-2014, 07:41 AM
This thread is what I find to be the best of how the internet has changed our lives....I'm a sap for these kinds of stories. I wish there were a generation behind me to pass the torch.

GotHalos
03-04-2014, 09:58 AM
This thread is what I find to be the best of how the internet has changed our lives....I'm a sap for these kinds of stories. I wish there were a generation behind me to pass the torch.

:thumbup:

HB Vic
03-04-2014, 04:49 PM
Trouble good meeting you in Needles. And I told you people would love to hear your story, thanks again for sharing it!!

JusTrouble
03-04-2014, 08:01 PM
Trouble good meeting you in Needles. And I told you people would love to hear your story, thanks again for sharing it!!

I enjoyed meeting the 3 of you also. The responses rewarded the effort. Thanks

Retired Flatbottom Racer
03-07-2014, 08:53 AM
JT, It was great meeting you in Needles! Your story is what it's all about for me. As I told you, I would give anything to have my dads old boat. Hope to see you there next time in Sept..!!