My 1967 Belmont Flatbottom story

[JusTrouble]

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.

[GotHalos]

Thanks for sharing.

Great pictures!

[JusTrouble]

Thanks
Just gettin to the good part

[JusTrouble]

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]

The ride

[JusTrouble]

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.

[JusTrouble]

more pics

[JusTrouble]

more pics

[JusTrouble]

Dad in the Belmont in 1967



Me in the Dad's all originalBelmont in 2013

[Mrs.K034]

Very cool story!! Thanks so much for sharing!