Hi - I'm new to the site and was wondering if anyone had info on the Marchetti race boats. I
have one and am in the process of bringing it back to life. Its 10' long
Hi - I'm new to the site and was wondering if anyone had info on the Marchetti race boats. I
have one and am in the process of bringing it back to life. Its 10' long
Aroune 1963, I drove Roy Miner's B Marchetti at Kingburg, California (Fred Hauenstein's home town) we raced around an island. The boat had a tapered cockpit, wide by the steering wheel. I got a good start on the inside and led til the end of the island. I got to the end of the island, no buoys, just island, I climbed forward and turned it like a chine turning runabout. Ted May had got real wide thinking I'd slide out, when he saw what I did, he cranked it hard left and ran on the island and up the bank and he and landed in a tree. I won the heat and the race. Ted came in mad as hell, both of his knee pads were filled with mud. I said, "How come you ran into the island? He just started muttering! I was at Essex, Maryland, Stock Nationals 1967. I was looking to borrow a Sid Craft C or D Hydro as I had been on the road all summer and my Sid was back in California. Nick Marchetti wanted me to try some boat he guaranteed me I'd win D Hydro with it. I checked it out and tried to lift the bow....it weighed more than my whole Sid-Craft. I borrowed Buzz Gotfried's Sid and ....that's another story.
Several of the big-time hydro builders of the '50s-'70s offered hulls for ASH and BSH, and an in-between size they called an A-B hydro. IIRC, these in-between sized boats were offered by Swift, Sid, Marchetti, maybe Hedlund, and Craig-Craft. And as I remember it, some of the fastest guys in BSH used these smallish boats. Jeff Lowe, who could beat anybody in Reg. 10 and set the competition record, had an A/B Marchetti he'd bought from Mike Jones, who had run it in ASH. A few years later, Jan Christ used a little A/B Craig-Craft to blow past everybody. Both of these guys were also were top-notch drivers. Both were physically a little bigger than the ideal size to be on minimum weight, so maybe that's why they went with the small boats. As for nose-heavy Marchettis, Ed Karelsen was already building hydros with spliced bottoms in his early-'60s ASH boats; the usual 1/4" plywood spliced to a piece of 1/8" plywood forward of the sponsons to keep the front-end light. By the mid-Sixties Ed was doing this with bigger classes. I don't know whether any of the other builders ever did this, but I don't think Marchetti did.
All this is a long way of saying to the O.P. that when you measure your Marchetti, tell us the exact length overall, as well as the length from the back edge of the sponson to the back edge of the bottom, what's called the "afterplane" length . . . roughly five feet for your boat, but give an exact measurement and the old guys who aren't as Altzheimered as me can tell you if your boat is and A, a B, or an A/B.
This is a 10'8" Marchettii (10-10"?] I owned for some time and is now back
in NJ near near where it was concieved .
Never raced, 'boys toy', not mine !
No sign of Merc clamps, but sign of KR or SR ?
Cloth deck, so early '60s, 'spaghetti boat ' and few survive.
Maybe a good B popper boat ?
I never did like the later 'scallop deck' C/D hydros,
ie; the transition to pickle forks, although some had sucess with them;
-also a pic of Chuck Simon in this type boat with a converted deflector B Konig
I still have this motor, but never saw this pic before I let go the boat
PS; -thanx to Karl W for the CS pic , and other info.
PPS. -that is a SR-39 hex head on the Marchetti, but with copper 4 stud
'Thermo Flow ' aftermarket heads. c1935?
Last edited by BRIAN HENDRICK; 09-14-2015 at 06:13 PM. Reason: sp?
The smaller boat in the top photo has the tapered cockpit Ron mentioned. In this and many other ways, those first Marchettis were VERY similar to Hal Kelly's "Wetback" design. I'd like to know if Nick got his start with a set of Hal Kelly's plans, then made a couple of mostly cosmetic changes (the cowl, and the contour of the bow) and called it a Marchetti. A lot of builders started by making slight modifications to a popular boat of their day.
Hello,
Early 1960's would have a cloth front deck....... Later 1960's would be an all wood deck.
At 10' long, it would most likely would have been a B Stock or C Stock or maybe an A or B Alky boat.
A picture would help.
Best of all, no matter what, I will be a cool restoration project.
All the Best,
Dean Hobart........................................
Dean Hobart
Had a 11 ft Mar****ty..Leaked from day 1..Had it back to Nick 4 or 5 times..he said it was worm holes !!!! Ran A & B alky on it
The O.P. is evidently new to all of this, and we ought to get him clued-in a little bit.
DennyJoe, over the years and decades there were lots of boat-builders, from do-it-yourselfers just building their own hull (often from someone else's plans, sometimes from kits) to those who made their living or part of their living at it. And over the years, at any given time there was usually one, maybe two big names, boat-builders who sold their outboard hydros or runabouts all over the country. In the Thirties and Forties I believe it was Jacoby, in the early Fifties, Neal. By the mid-Fifties, Joe Swift of Florida was turning out hydros on a production-line on a scale unmatched before or since, as far as I know (all of this is subject to correction). From the late-Fifties to mid-Sixties, Sid-Craft in New Jersey was the big name in hydros; they built a lot of runabouts as well but not as many as the long-time runabout king, DeSilva, in California. But the Sids never had their own way, and had to battle it out with the other big name in hydros in the Sixties, Marchetti. Nick Marchetti built the whole range of hydros from A Stock to F Alky, and his boats won plenty of championships. I was a little local-area mid-pack racer in those days, and had a couple of Marchettis for a little while each, a 10' 2'' for BSH and AOH, then a 10' 8" for AOH (what is now more sensibly called 250ccHydro). Both were a little heavy, and I never liked the look of Marchetti's rather low non-trips. But neither boat ever bit me or did anything scary, and I had boats I thought were better that did both!
So DennyJoe, you have a real period-piece there. I'll caution you that like a lot of racing outboard hydros, it's not the kind of playboat that you can bounce over cruiser wakes, and if you try to run over any sort of swell or rollers, you'll soon be contemplating your error. Light flat chop on the lake is what you want, and with that and a light 20-25hp motor and a "speed" prop, you'll have a great time. Best idea is to cartop the boat to a local race (the various organizations post their schedules on this site or www.hydroracer.net ). You'll get lots of info from the old-timers on fixing up the boat, and on engines and props and set-up.
To the old-timers, maybe we ought to have the thread devoted to creating a historical time-line showing what boats, Stock and alky, hydro and runabout, were being used in what years and decades. Not only the big names (am I right in thinking that Krier "owns" the alky runabout classes today in the way DeSilva used to?), but the mostly regional boats (in the Northwest, Karelsen, Ron Jones, Foti, Goff, R&D, and Price-Craft as examples from my day) as well.
In the late 60's, I was impressed with Dick Summerfield's boat selection. At three different ( maybe even consecutive ) races, he showed up with a C and a D Marchetti, C&D Sids and C&D Castas. He always ran well and the make of boat didn't make much difference.
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