I accidentally bought this boat on Ebay in August, 2004. The boat appeared on Ebay one night when I decided just to look at photos of old boats. The opening bid was very low so I thought why not submit a low bid? I forgot about it. About a week later I received an email that began: “Congratulations….”
I decided I should read the item description and see what I purchased. I discovered the boat was located in the center of Vermont (I live near Houston).
I took off work and drove to Vermont with my girlfriend. On the way we stopped by Mammoth Cave and Niagara Falls. Somewhere in Kentucky I had a trailer hitch mounted on the van.
The boat was a single owner boat owned by a nice family that lived on a lake. The trailer was seldom used so I had it rebuilt before we left town. The van would not pull the boat up the mountain to leave the owner’s lake house. He drove it for me and got a running start up the mountain road while his wife stood lookout at the top of the road for approaching vehicles. (It was a dark night and they had a system worked out where two flashes from her flashlight was a signal to: "stop, a vehicle is approaching".)
On the return trip, pulling the boat all the way, we saw New York City, had lobsters in Connecticut, Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches in Philadelphia, barbeque in Tennessee, and crawfish in New Orleans.
Every time I saw a pond of water I wanted to stop and launch the boat but my GF had to get back to work so I had to wait.
Buying this ’68 Mustang has been one of the most fun things I have done.
I began interior restoration, as you can see the newly made back seat, but I was derailed when I suffered a blown head gasket. I therefore took the opportunity to replace the heads with GT40-Ps, the Holley 2V with a Holley 450CFM 4V, the cam with a SpeedPro Marine cam (only mildly hot), and the points with Petronix electronic conversion.
The trailer was custom built to fit the boat in December of 2004.
You just have to love these boats.