David Williams, executive director at the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum in Kent, WA, sent me an interim update report on the grant we made in support of their J(Junior)-Hydro Program. David writes the following:
“J (Junior) Class racing uses the same 15 cubic inch motor on two different styles of boats. One is a 3 point hydro and the other is a runabout.”
David sent the following picture as an example of these two different styles. Note the hydroplane under construction in the background.
David describes the above picture thus: “The boat on the left of the photo is a hydro and the boat on the right is a runabout. Hydros are a bit faster but the runabouts can handle rougher water and are a little less prone to tip over. Both styles of boat are very popular but our program has only been building hydros because we’ve never had a good runabout kit. This left the folks who prefer to race runabouts out of the loop. We have spent this winter / spring doing Research and Development on a new runabout kit and plan to start a runabout building program this fall with a whole group of families that are more comfortable with the runabout design.”
David wraps up his report by telling us, “We are helping Seattle OutBoard Association with their “New Folks in Boats” in late August and we have close to a dozen kids who will get their first chance to drive a raceboat. We hope to enroll several in our next J-Hydro build (which hopefully will go right along side our J-Runabout build). So far we have four families signed up for the next J-Hydro build.”