More Pictures Of My Guppy 13

Article By Shorty


Here she is with her rig fully setup. Neat emblem, the two M's must stand for Melen Marine. I was looking at my missing "5" and thinking about the hull number, my boat is #245 made in October of 1975, and I know they were only produced in '74-'75, so this could have been one of the last ones made. Neat having one of only so few that were made.

It was a nice day to visit the dragon, the wind wasn't there as much as it could have been, but I had enough to get by.

The Guppy does pretty well at ghosting along in almost no wind, I think to be credited towards it's rather V shaped bottom. With just a little bit of wind, she would quickly speed up to 3.8 mph. If my calculations are correct, the theoretical hull speed of the guppy is 5.5 mph, but I suspect faster than that could be achieved on a reach because of the semi-planing hull.

To keep from launching my car, I made a really simple tounge extension for the trailer. It is just a couple of 2x4's, with a socket on one end, a piece of conduit stick up under where it meets the trailer socket, and a couple of cleates & rope that tie it to the trailer. It worked really well.

That crack in the keel turned out to be a gouge instead. I was really scratching my head trying to figure how someone could have gouged it there, until I saw how close the bunk boards get to the keel during launching. I can see that possibly the trailer wasn't dunked far enough, and the wind could have blown the boat sideways and into the boards.

I stripped off the surface paint, added more glass to the bottom of the keel and patched the gouge. The keel is a molded part of the hull that is later filled with concrete, which makes it so much stronger than a bolted on keel. The more I look at the boat, the more I am impressed with the designer who came up with it.