The Yellow Short Stuff
Around the same time as the Fishing Boat/Lobster Boat came the Short Stuff's. I bought two boats from Dumas lovely fiberglass hull and deck, with plywood bulkheads, transom doubler and instructions for installing a nitro engine. I gave one of the boats to my son Matt and it became the Red Short Stuff and kept the other which is the Yellow Short Stuff. The building is the best part for me,I enjoy running them to see how they perform, and the competition with my son and his boat. The SS is a 20 size DeepVee 18" long, by 6 7/8" wide. I was fortunate in that I acquired 2 more SS's a couple of years ago just as Dumas stopped making and selling the fiberglass model, they still sell a wooden boat kit. The Orange Jet boat is another SS but that is a story in it's self.
Today 2008- When you look at the slide gallery of photos of the YSS you will see the whole gamut of hardware. The boat is back to the very basic 19T motor, flex shaft, steerable strut that I designed many years ago. Steering servo up under the deck with double stick tape and a tywrap, the receiver and speed controll are on a bench seat affair up under the deck to keep them out of the little water that gets in. I vacuum formed the hatch cover/cockpits from .030 lexan, they are held in place with electrical tape which does a nice job of sealing out the water. The gear drive you see in some of the photos is now in a fourth SS with a special outdrive that is still in development.
The Concept for these boats was a fun to run and easy to maintain, with enough speed to be fun. Originally we ran them with stock 27T motors pushing a Octura X427 2blade prop, with a 6cell stick pack out of one of our cars. Today they run 19Tbb motors on 4 cells and run faster and much longer then they did when we started.
The last four photos in the slide show are of todays boat.