Classic boats
Classic Boats of Note by Chris “Seabuddy” Brown
Chris-Craft Big Block Jet-Powered Fiberglass Boat
H ##A restored XL-18 model low-profile speed boat.
58 June 2016 PropTalk.com
ere is a special Chris-Craft from the past. She is a restored 1972 18-foot XL-18 model. This boat looks her part, a California low-profile speed boat. Power is a “built” 454 Chevy engine full of speed parts. She came with a Jacuzzi water jet pump. The hull is a Rudy Ramos of Rayson Craft boats design. Rudy was perhaps the top man in the water ski, gofast boat business in Southern California. He was hired by Chris-Craft to make its hull design. His team made the plug and the Chris-Craft molds used to build boats. He even made the first complete boat and sent it off from his Gardena, CA, shop to Chris-Craft headquarters, in Pompano Beach, FL (at the time). The rest of the boat—deck, windshield, dash, and cockpit—was designed by Chris-Craft’s top designer, Dick Avery, who had joined Chris-Craft from Ford Motor Company in 1962. He first developed the lines on paper at his office in Florida to “do a barrelback design like the beautiful old woodies but in fiberglass,” and then traveled to Rudy’s California shop to see that the ChrisCraft flair was correctly executed by Rudy’s master mold builders. At Pompano, there was a fast ride on nearby Lake Santa Barbara, where two top men from Chris-Craft headquarters tried it out and approved the design for production. They made 201 of this model. Most came with a 454 from Guardian Marine that was a built up Chevrolet block full of speed parts to make a 400-hp engine. A few came with a 350 size engine, but the big block Chevy was the hot ticket. By the way, like most good California-style jet boats, the helmsman can get passengers wet in this boat any time he or she wants. A low-profile, powerful jet boat can turn so tight at 40 miles per hour that hull spray wets down the aft seat. As jets do not have gears (they achieve reverse by dropping a gate over the thrusting water to redirect its flow enough under the stern of the boat to create a reverse motion), if the engine is running, the jet thrusts high-speed water out of its nozzle. Gate up = forward speed; gate down = reverse; gate in the middle = neutral. Here is the surprise: Run the boat and engine at about 3500 rpm, and drop the gate for reverse. The re-directed thrust of the water under the stern will lift it up and push the bow down such that water comes over the foredeck and gets both the driver and his front seat passenger wet with a big scoop of water dumped in their laps.