Poor Man's Yacht

In Manhattan's Grand Central Palace last week there was the feel of the sea. As yachtsmen crowded into the 1948 National Motor Boat Show, they were "piped aboard" by the cheery notes of a boatswain's whistle. There was another cheery note: in the cheaper price class there were more boats than ever. Some prices were down from last year's, though most were up a bit.

The eye catcher was the custom-built $30,600 Sport Fisherman of Consolidated Shipbuilding Corp., with red-leather "fighting" and swordfish chairs, and a built-in cocktail bar. But the crowd pleasers were the mass production models like M. M. Davis & Son's 21-ft. Cruis-Along ($2,440) and Churchward & Co.'s all-steel, all-welded Steelcraft cruisers, priced from $2,555 to $4,390.

Steel Builder. If the day of the poor man's yacht had not quite arrived, Steel-craft's Jack Churchward, 54, was doing his best to make it dawn. Ever since he graduated from Princeton, Jack Churchward has tinkered with welding processes. His inventions made money but his ambition was to become the Henry Ford of pleasure boats.

In 1934, he put his welding knowledge to work on his first steel model, playfully called it "Electrolysis." But he did not start mass production until 194,5. Last year, his assembly-line yard at West Haven, Conn, turned out one steel cruiser every 90 minutes, and he grossed $4,250,000. (When Steelcraft's 1,000th boat came off the line, Churchward had it lifted 106 feet by a crane, then dropped to demonstrate its indestructibility.) So far, he has turned out 1,860 cruisers. This year he is stepping up production one-third, and hopes to turn out more small cruisers than all the other boatbuilders combined.

Wooden boat builders still sniff at steel hulls, claiming that they are noisier, hotter, and expensive to maintain. But Churchward says flatly: not so.

Home Builder. Plastics were also well represented at the show. Beetle Boat Co., Inc.'s 12 1/2-ft. centerboard sailboat was molded in one piece of Fiberglas. From his Tulsa factory, Gar Wood Jr. flew in two 16-ft. speedboats pressed from a plastic called "Nautilite." Other novelties: seat cushions with phosphorescent side-strips, non-tipping gasoline cans, an automatic pilot for outboard motors, a mechanism which automatically frees snagged outboard propellers.

Smallest boat was an 8-ft. sailing pram made from a construction kit. It sold for $35 and could be built at home.

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