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!"Originally Posted by Uncle Jesse
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."
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