The Latest

• Tweet

• Tweet

After 3 years of off-and-on construction, rounding up materials, and figuring out how to do things (including perusing the Glen-L forums), we finally lauched our TNT last weekend. The boat is a birthday present to our two kids, who shortly will be 15 & 18 and who assisted me in building it. My dad and I build a 8′ “Yellowjacket” when I was 13.

On a glorious Oct. day we loaded up the boat on a trailer I borrowed and drove it up the cabin in Wisconsin. Too bad after one weekend of test drives we had to put it away already until next spring, but that’s life in the great white north.

We still have some projects to finish: some paint touch up, gauges, interior carpet, and the fin.

Just FYI, I thought I’d try it without a fin first (didn’t have the heart to rip into my nice straight keel to file off a flat spot for the fin). The fin is definitely required though, she won’t turn at high speed, just slides around. While that might be kind of fun, you definitely want to be able to turn sharp at high speed… See the video.

Everything else worked pretty well. We did have one exciting moment when the throttle stuck… Thank goodness it’s an electric start and the key did the trick. I figured out I didn’t have the throttle cable secured correctly and it had popped off.

Here is a little video of the first test drives: TNT Maiden voyage and some pictures. Also, lots of construction pictures can be seen at https://picasaweb.google.com/tim516/Boat?authuser=0&feat=directlink