shallow sponsoned kneeldown/laydown tunnel boat

**Joe Silvestri 36-S** · 12-01-2005

After looking at all of the different types of racing, boat designs, etc... here at BRF, I'm going to ask the question I asked at Hydroracer last winter. Is it practical to design and build a shallow sponsoned, kneeldown/laydown, tunnel boat for racing in either the stock, the mod, or the pro catagory? I'm not sure it would be legal at this time, but I've thought about this concept for a couple of years now. If it were practical and worked, it would surely allow us to race on so many more bodies of water, because we would not have to worry about the water becoming to rough. This could potentially allow us to race at sites that could draw more spectators, which in turn, could possibly draw new racers to our sport.

Also, does anyone have pictures of 3-point hydros that are raced in Europe? When my parents came back from Italy a couple years ago, they had pictures of hydros that they saw at a rest stop and pictures they had taken while visiting the Rossi factory. I'm curious, because by the looks of a few of the photos, there seems to be some sort of tunnel built into the afterplane. The boat still seemed to be a 3-point hydro but the afterplane had, what appeared to be a 2' pad at the bottom of it, which followed the shape of the airtrap. I'm not sure I explained this correctly, but I do not have a good picture to look at tofully understand what I saw. Thanks for any info.

**kws** · 12-01-2005

SOUNDS LIKE A FAIR PLAN TO ME ...
but you will have to get the board to allow longer sponsons it seems to me . As the rules state ( from memory) sponsons cannot be longer than 60% of the boat length( hydro)
then you have the issue do you run hydro,runabouts & tunnels or would the tunnels run with the hydros ?

ok somebody go ahead and slap me lol

**spn#43** · 12-01-2005

I got tons of pictures of formula-500 boats if that's what you are talking about, when I get out of work I'll post some.

**David Weaver** · 12-01-2005

Such a boat would not be legal today.

**Jeff Akers** · 12-01-2005

They ran the tunnels and hydros together. I remember looking at all the boats in the morning and thinking , cool a tunnel class too

Then when they lined up on the beach with the hydros I thought , no way, they cant run them together, sure as hell did!
It was the most exiting racing event I have ever seen!
SAFE ????? NO FRIGIN WAY!!!!

Glad my brother was standing on the beach with me ( he was on crutches from a blow accedent during a kilo run). I don't think I could have watched the start, and race to the first 90+Degree turn if he was in that race. He does'nt know this, but I'm glad he couldnt race that day!!!

**Jeff Akers** · 12-01-2005

After reading my post it may sound a little negative

Joe, I understand what you are talking about is a more "useable" boat. Thats a good thing and your Idea's are worth talking about. when I read kws's post and Qestion about would they run with hydros or???
Thats when the "flashback" started

I'll shut up go back to work on my boat now

**spn#43** · 12-01-2005

here are some

**spn#43** · 12-01-2005

**Joe Silvestri 36-S** · 12-01-2005

Jeff,

Your right, all I'm trying to do is come up with a way in which we could design a boat, which would be close to what we race now, that would be more user friendly no matter what the water conditions. I have many boat design ideas, which I have no idea if they will work, but just thought I'd throw this idea out there and get some feed back from all of BRF's members since there are so many racers of different factions on here.

I know that the design idea would not be legal right now, but if the design idea worked, could it be legal in the future.

Some of the boat designers on hydroracer said that the two designs should not race together and their reasoning made sense.

The pictures my parents brought back from Italy were of OSY-400 boats.

Any and all replies are requested, no hard feelings here. I love talking about this stuff.

On a similar concept, I know that Marc Johnson is planning on building a couple CSH's this winter and is planning on building the cockpit sides, transom and dash as one piece, like a capsule. I can't wait to see the results and I think this is a good start to making the boats safer. I build my cockpit sides very tall simply for protection from other boats and it helps keep me in the boat while driving through rough water. Another safety feature in my mind.

**paul jillings** · 12-02-2005

Most of those boats are 500's which are now all tunnel hulls in the Internaitonal series (World F500).

The smaller classes (OSY, 125, 250 & 350) still run hydro's with the maximum sponson length of 60%.

For some more pictures here is another link :-

http://republika.pl/jlw/indexEN2004.html