Colinism

 A little while back I wrote a short intro to the Albin 24 getaway. LINK HERE   Well now I found one for sale here in the North East. The ad states it has the 318 thou it has a knock. Otherwise looks to be in decent shape in the pictures.  Find the listing here on Craigslist

BCS 201 tiller I have a bit of an obsession with multi use items. Sometimes they aren’t very practical but I love a tool or anything else that can do a variety of jobs well. My Leatherman Wave being a good example. Would you use it to rebuild an engine? Nope. Is it incredibly useful to have on your hip doing projects around the house? Yep. Which leads me to todays topic, Two Wheeled tractors and in particular BCS. While browsing Craigs List today, I came across, a BCS rototiller. LINK I have known about BCS tractors for about a decade now and look for them from time to time but they are often well out of budget. This one was cheap so I dug a bit more and determined it was really mostly a rototiller version and not a true two wheel tractor (single rear PTO no reverse and limited controls). I’m pretty sure it’s 201 model but have emailed to confirm. So what is a 2 wheel tractor and how is it different then a regular rototiller? 2 Wheel tractors are pretty much what they sound like. They...

1990's Albin's why do I like you so much. There just something about the classic but up to date styling, with a good dose of practicality that's just hard to ignore.  The 24 is an oddball in some respects with a relatively few examples (48) made for a 24 footer. It's basically a scaled down version of the 31-34 foot command bridge models Albin built over the years. Having the raised helm area nets you more cabin in the larger boat.  Here it gets the engine under foot instead of in a box in the cockpit, as would normally be the case on a 24 foot boat with a straight shaft inboard.In actuality the straight shaft is one of the more unusual parts of this boat. While the arrangement was common in the pre stern drive era, it was very uncommon by the early 90's. The only other production cabin boat under 26' with an inboard of the time period I can think of is Shamrock (I'm sure there are others but I'm not going to spend all day finding them).  In the ...

Sometimes you just find a boat and you have to look into it more. I happened to be looking thru motor yacht listings one day and came across a Carver 325. The reason it  to me was the swim platform arrangement. Instead of a near vertical transom there was a series of steps in the platform allowing a non climb transition to the area above the aft cabin. Other then that change and some tweaks to the bridge this is the same basic 32' motor yacht Carver offered for a couple decades. But I like it might be my favorite small motor yacht. The arrangement below with a enormous v shaped dinette really makes it feel like a bigger boat and the berth arrangement in the back while a bit odd is versatile. Almost all of these are gas powered but diesel was an option. For a detailed write up the owner of boat-project.com used to own one and has mods and lots of info on his page http://www.boat-project.com/boats/carver.htm For some specs here is the factory info https://drive.google.com...

Interesting E-bay find. Donzi only made 40 of these back in the day. In collaboration with Mercruiser they had a twin prop surface piercing outdrive quite the toy. Unfortunately they became tough to fix later and many ended like this with a regular Bravo. These were around $55,000 new if I recall so trading around 12k seems a deal before the 2008 collapse I remember seeing them stil getting in the mid to high 20's. See it here on EBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/1995-Donzi-classic-22-Blackhawk-/123598153819?hash=item1cc706285b%3Ag%3AuK4AAOSwx0FbkEvD&nma=true&si=elhlIItzsrK8BcPXZaezzc%252FVwrs%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

If you go walking thru a boat show today you will see a number of new boats with outboards hidden behind covers. The  Searay 370   is one of the best known example of this. With Twin Mercury outboards hidden under fiberglass cowlings forward of the transom, it looks like a sleek express cruiser with a secret. Of course this idea isn’t new. People have been trying to hide outboards basically since outboards were invented.  You will notice a small addition to the Mercury in the Searay above, a fresh air vent to keep the engine well fed with clean air. I have seen this in a few homemade wooden boats and a handful of modified sailboats thou of course without the nicely molded OEM cowl. Why you might ask do people want to hide their shiny expensive outboard. Well for one lots of people don’t like the look of them hanging off the rear of the boat. They also tend to handle differently then inboard boats due to both their prop design and extreme aft...

I have been interested in RV's for a long time. Over the years I have noticed they tend to built incredibly cheaply with a few notable exceptions (air streams, certain fiberglass campers, bus conversions). The most common build is basically stick built with sheathing hung on wood framing. you also then have some with aluminum framing. You have also had a number made with fiberglass, much  like how a boat is constructed with a top and bottom section molded and then bolted/sealed together. One of my personal favorite types of RV is the truck camper. Having a removable living section and a truck to tow some other toy like a boat or ATV seems ideal. One issue these campers have is that weight is a major issue. Pickups have limited payload and truck campers often push the limits of these payloads. These would make them ideal candidates for lightweight composite construction with cored composites. While there are fiberglass camper builders out there making outstanding products they...