I have asked this question before without success, but I have better pics now and more information. From the date of the engine she was built in 1969/70. She is a built in double diagonal mahogany with a mahogany faced ply deck over deck beams. She is powered by a BMW 411 2 litre engine. (BMW 2002ti spec) with a ZF Z-14 sterndrive leg. She also has Gibson manual hydraulic trim tabs and Morse Teleflex steering.
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I know a bit about boat building and I have built boats in both GRP and in cold moulded veneers, and I know that nobody would use the latter much more time consuming method without good reason.
She was never designed to show the veneers as the last lamination was laid diagonally, so it was not for cosmetic reasons.
It could be that she was built as a prototype and a plug for a future production boat, but I have not found one like it.
Or she could have been built as a one-off race boat. I know that a Mike Bellamy did set a 2 litre class record on Windermere in 1970 with a fletcher using exactly the same BMW engine and ZF sterndrive set-up. So maybe it was the engine of choice at the time for that category. Also her hull shape with a deep V and a relatively narrow waterline beam giving a deep narrow canoe body form and flared topsides is typical of offshore raceboats of the era.
I have stripped the deck back to the mahogany face veneer and intend to keep it in varnish although I suspect it was never intended to be so originally. The topsides are to be painted and were black I think, but I am going for bright red. The engine and drive leg are stripped and being re-built. The upholstery is in blue vinyl and in too god a condition to be original.
Any opinions or thoughts as to the boats origins would be greatly appreciated.
