A Pretty Good Day...

[Marco]

Hey Hap ,
Those videos are absolutely fantastic!!!!. Professional quality video capture and jet boat manipulation. Are these meant for commercial sale/distribution or is it just a day on the water for giggles ???

Mark

[hap]

Thank you Marco, I am happy you liked them. The boats are just for fun, but fishing and hunting access is the driver. There are a couple outfits making them now up here though. The first edition they built entirely from scratch, lofting their own designs, even. They got a lot of experience, fast.

[Uncle Jesse]

I used to see a guy on the Chattahoochee here north of Atlanta that built jet drive boats by taking the drive out of wrecked jet skis and putting them in jon or semi-vee aluminum fishing boats. The Hooch does not have the challenges of your wild rivers but there are several small falls and rapid that he traveled up easily. He picked up the moniker of "Jet boat Jerry."

[Marco]

Hap,
I also wanted to know if the videos were made for commercial consumption or just for fun. My opinion suggests that they ARE marketable . The only problem I see is how to categorize them...........as an advert for the boat manufacturer or a "Visit Alaska" promo ( in which case I overheard a "stay home" comment which would of course have to be edited out ).
Quality stuff done by guys just havin a blast.

Mark

[hap]

Marco, these are strictly for fun and their own amusement. There is a small group of guys building and running them up here and they are a social bunch for the most part.

One of my "second sons" has some good videos and you can find him on Youtube as well, Eben Fiorentino is his name. He has a video of a run he made with my son up Grant Creek. It was a gnarly run! I am glad they did not ask me to go because I may have been stupid enough to say "Yes!"

Riley's video titled something like "Guessit Creek" is a ride I did go on and we had no idea if we had any chance of getting up it. Chainsaws, rope and tackle, shovels, and sweat got us there. We had hoped to find the Mother Lode of lake trout... did not... but it was a great weekend just the same. And in case anyone thinks it was cheating, all of the footage showing wood being cut was edited out. Many log jumps were left in, as were several crashes. Once crash in a spruce took my glasses and a favorite hat and made them disappear in a deep hole.

[hap]

I used to see a guy on the Chattahoochee here north of Atlanta that built jet drive boats by taking the drive out of wrecked jet skis and putting them in jon or semi-vee aluminum fishing boats. The Hooch does not have the challenges of your wild rivers but there are several small falls and rapid that he traveled up easily. He picked up the moniker of "Jet boat Jerry."

Same motor source, but they build their own hulls, mostly. As they are small boats they do not need really thick aluminum, but it is still heavier than the typical jon boat. The bottoms are covered with HDPE skid plates, glued and screwed on. Some of the dings they get are incredible displays of "force directed!"

The first time I went for a ride with Riley in his first boat we were running in a tiny stream with a tremendous bit of family history. The first shock came to me when we found ourselves in a long, very shallow pool with no current. At the head of the pool was gravel rise, about a foot in elevation of dry gravel to the next pool. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, grinned and gunned it! As we shot up he killed the jet pump, waited till we splashed on the other side, hit the starter and we were off! It made me laugh how well the little boat shot up the trickles.

Later, coming down the "river" we got lost on which track to take and ended up headed toward a green spruce laying across, and blocking our path. With a shrug, a wink, and a mashed throttle we hit the spruce. The tree turned with us rather than parting. Loaded, like a series of monster spey rods, it returned to its previous shape and place. It lifted the boat and slowed it right down. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to throw my weight forward by leaning well out over the bow. It was enough to break the situation free and allow ALL of those limb "rods" to put buckets of river water in my face! We shot through the spruce and ended up on the bank in a smallish log jam. Riley was afraid I had hurt myself. But I was just laughing too hard to breathe!

Later, as we were running down he suddenly hit the kill switch and pointed up an avalanche chute above us. He quickly grabbed his rifle and ran up the chute and shot a brown bear. It only took me a half-hour to get where he went!

In the late '60s my father left me on the beach just out of sight of Riley's bear. I watched him climb the mountain through a spotting scope and gave him signals with life jackets on canoe paddles to lead him to a flock of mountain goats. When he shot a goat I went fishing up a tiny creek that disappeared many years ago under glacial silt. I was concentrating on fish; it was a very hot August day; and it was dead calm. The bear grass was over my head and I was just stumbling through it watching a particular fish.

Call it my intuition, Spidey Sense, or luck... but things seemed wrong suddenly. Looking through the grass as best I could, maybe 15-20 feet away was a bear. It was a brown bear. It was sleeping and snoring so loudly I hear it still on calm evenings! I can also solidly report it was a boar, on his back, all four legs spread out! I did have a rifle and had used it quite a bit, but I was 13 or 14.

I backed out of there, and when I hit open beach, I ran all the way back to the tripod, still set up on our landing spot.

My father took a photo of the canoe with the goat when he got back to pick me up. He had boned out and carried a mountain goat off the mountain in a trappers' pack he had made of wood and fiberglass. It hurt just picking it up empty! I think earlier generations of humans had fewer nerve endings dedicated to pain sensing!

Riley has the original photo with my father's notations on the back, framed, in his "man room."

[hap]

Wildly!!! While I was tapping out the last missive I was distracted by every dog in the neighborhood going nuts! As the baying, barking, and whatever you call the other sounds dogs make increased I looked down the road in front of my house and watched a brown bear, probably a young boar, but maybe a sow, turn the corner at the bottom of the road. A few of you have been here before and know what I am talking about... Anyway, due South, it turned up the hill, due north, headed toward my house. About 80 yards (halfway here) it cranked a left into a row of houses and was gone from sight. The pack (six mixed dogs) shot right past the turn and up the hill. A few minutes later the bear crossed the road right where it made the first turn I saw and wandered down over the bluff. I can still hear the dogs to my NW barking...