The Urge for Sport Boats

Detailing Some of the Latest Developments in Cruisers and Runabouts for Ardent Sportsmen

THE acceleration in our habits of thought, action, transportation and communication has made us a great sporting nation. We go in droves to see other people perform prodigious feats of recreational importance. And millions of us, in fact practically our whole nation, are participating in various branches of sport, largely for the sake of amusement, partly for the sake of the health benefits involved.

Increasingly popular among our newer sports is that of motor boating. Every year, for the past five, I have made the statement at this time that the following twelve months are destined to be motor boating's greatest and most prosperous season. And each year this has been true in a rising crescendo. Nothing, barring a war, a financial collapse or a national calamity can prevent 1929 from showing a tremendous growth in the popularity of motor boats of all kinds and ushering new thousands of Americans into this worthwhile sport.

Whenever a nation is prosperous and at peace it reflects these happy conditions in the brilliance of its homes, its clothing, its vehicles and everything else it uses—brilliance of line as well as colour. Our motor cars, as convincingly shown by the magnificent vehicles revealed in the recent Automobile Salon in New York, have become long and rakish and speedy looking in their combinations of dashing curves, straight lines and new and harmonious colours.

So it is with the motor boat for 1929. Runabouts, racing boats, family cruisers, express cruisers and commuting day cruisers have been created from the sport thoughts of their designers and owners. They are graceful beyond any previous conception of boats of their types. Runabouts, long and sweeping in their lines have three luxurious cockpits where the passengers loll at 60 miles an hour. Cruisers have cockpits forward as well as aft for the enjoyment of the rushing breezes, and double cabins for the separation of families and guests into logical groups. And, instead of all boats being black or white or in natural wood finish, we have, for next year, a wide choice of vivid colors from which to select.

Motor boating is not merely a matter of money. The growing boy or girl, or older person for that matter, with an outboard racing craft is likely to get much more fun out of it than the millionaire with his ocean cruising yacht. In the numberless varieties of new boats that lie between these extremes there are comfortable, reliable craft to please every possible devotee of the sport, limited only by the individual's taste and pocketbook. The Twenty-fourth Annual Motor Boat Show, held in the Grand Central Palace, New York, January 18th to 26th, will reveal in a striking manner the progress of this great new sport which now has, in this country, something over a million followers.

Do you remember the little glass cabin launches, then called cruisers, which were displayed twenty years or more ago in the motor boat shows at the old Madison Square Garden?

Those waddling craft, of an extremely temperamental nature, were shown to the number of seven or eight at each exposition. In the forthcoming Motor Boat Show there will be twenty-seven magnificent cruisers ranging from a 23-footer, supplying living accommodations for two men, up to a 6o-foot motor yacht providing the comforts of a floating hotel for twelve or more passengers and an additional crew of six men.

The Boat Show will prove that the slow, widebeamed old open boat has become a long, sleek but wonderfully seaworthy affair with an unheard-of mechanical reliability and a speed regulated only by the power of its engine. There will be fifty-three motor boat runabouts at the Show as well as several scores of newly designed outboard boats for racing, family use and a thousand other purposes. The growing importance of motor boating can be judged by the fact that, whereas last year's Show established a new record by displaying 200 boats of all types, this year's Show will have over 300—and more than 4°° marine engines.

Among the most interesting of the new boats are those Yclept Sea-Lyons, the product of Howard W. Lyon, Inc. One of these is a beautiful 42 by 9½ foot commuting cruiser from the drafting board of the famous racing designer, George F. Crouch, creator of Teaser, Baby Bootlegger, Miss Syndicate, Sister Syn and a hundred other champions in marine racing. She is a two-step hydroplane of the day-cruiser commuting type, with two cabins and three cockpits. Her lines are long and graceful, her power comes from two 200 h. p. Sterling Petrel engines driving twin screws and her speed is better than 40 miles an hour. Some craft for getting to business quickly!

Another of the Sea-Lyons is a 36 by 8 foot runabout designed, and, like the others to be built for Lyon, by Purdy. This also is a two-step hydroplane and she makes 60 miles an hour with a 450 h.p. Liberty motor.

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The motor boat world is agog over the new 38 foot Chris-Craft cruiser because its builders, Chris Smith and Sons, have, since the earliest days of the sport, devoted themselves to the building of high-speed runabouts and racing boats including some of the greatest craft that ever made racing history. This new Chris-Craft cruiser is a powerful, fast, graceful boat with comfortable sleeping quarters for four people, a completely equipped galley, linen closet, toilet facilities, full length mirror and other luxuries.

Elco's addition to its great fleet for 1929 will be a 40 foot cruiser which, at the moment of writing is shrouded in pre-Show mystery so far as details are concerned. She will have an Elco engine and living accommodations for seven or eight people. Various improvements have been made in the most famous Elco boat, the 34 foot Cruisette, which is known in almost every harbor of the civilized world.

Matthews, with its new speed cruiser and its highly popularized 38 foot family cruiser, will show something new in the way of cabin appointments, having employed a well-known interior decorator to attend to such matters as upholstery, fittings and cabin colour schemes.

During the few years that it has been in the motor boat world the American Car and Foundry Company has created an excellent reputation for its Eldredge-Mclnnis designed cruisers. This year, in addition to its regular type of cruising boats, it will introduce two new ones, a 26 foot day cruiser and a 40 foot double cabin cruiser.

In the foregoing paragraphs I have merely hinted at the high spots of the forthcoming Motor Boat Show. Luders will exhibit a magnificent new commuting express cruiser. Consolidated Ship Building Corporation, one of the oldest and most distinguished of our yacht builders, will exhibit a spectacular 50 foot cruiser powered with a 170 h.p. Speedway engine. This luxurious ship will be of mahogany and will include a large deckhouse and forward and after cockpits.

One of the most sumptuous big boats in the Show will be exhibited by Lawley. Dawn, Richardson, Chenevert, Hacker, Gar Wood and all the other prominent firms in the motor boat industry, as well as several new ones, will exhibit new craft for the enjoymentof ourmillionsof milesof protected waterways next summer. The "Fleetwing 40", one of our popular cruisers, will be there in several new guises.

Among the designers of yachts too large to get into any exposition there is great activity. One of the most interesting of the recent announcements in this direction is that of the designing of a 170 foot Diesel yacht for Charles F. Kettering, the engineering genius of General Motors and two 236 foot Diesel yachts for Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., and Fred J. Fisher of the same organization, by John H. Wells and Cox and Stevens in collaboration. These beautiful boats are simply another evidence of the popularity of motor propelled craft among the automobile manufacturers, a majority of whom devote most of their spare time to the enjoyment of marine activities, ranging all the way from racing hydroplanes to huge motor cruisers.

This is to be motor boating's biggest year, the biggest ever, not only in the United States but up in Canada where Ditchburn is doing some of the greatest work that is being done in the development of open and enclosed step boats of great speed, luxury and comfort and in some foreign countries as well. Motor boating seems to be on the point of coming into its own as a major sport.