Tag Archives: Speedboat

ONE OF THEM IS DREAMING – 17’ V 40’ WOODY

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ONE OF THEM IS DREAMING – 17’ V 40’ WOODY

An unnamed woody recently sent me a link to a craft on tme with a one line note “wow check this out, you should buy it”.

Well woodys turns out the craft was a 1955 17’ speedboat . Bui;t by someone named ‘Lewis’ and repowered with a 350hp Mercury inboard V8, capable of 90 kph (50 knots). 

Short answer – not for me.

Reading the listing it was all a little OTT eg “Rare vintage boats like this almost never come up for sale”, well thats not correct tme has mutable listings and then this line – “Trade-ins and finance welcome, and transport can be arranged nationwide.”

The nostrils started to twitch , smells like a car dealer…… well reading on turns out it was being sold by a car yard. And with a $40>45k price tag someones been sniffing the fuel tank.

So what’s the real story today – well this listing just illustrates the current divide between classic wooden motorboats and zoom zoom recreational trailer craft. 

For the same $$ you could own the 40’ Miller & Tunnage classic woody below and do laps of NZ.

Comet Speedboat

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COMET Speedboat

I was recently contacted by Tim Dudek who had brought an old speedboat from the back of Makarau to the north of Auckland. Tim was told by the previous owner it was built in 1927 and goes by either the name or make of ‘Comet’ – unfortunately the previous owner knew little about her history.
She is made of kauri and Tim is currently restoring her & has his fingers crossed his father is gathering an interest 😉

Hopefully Tom will keep us in the loop on the rebuild, in the mean time, can any of the woodys help out with her history ?

18-03-2017 – Input from John Bullivant  –  I have the drawing below from the D.N.Goodchild  (Penn USA, website (no longer running it seems) of a boat which looks like it, the plan being named ‘Comet’. If it is a boat built from this 40s? plan it would be a pity as a plan could have been obtained for around $20 to work from. Not sure if the site is ever coming back as the chap who ran the company which reproduces these old plans has apparently been ill, sold his house and may have given it up. I bought a set of plans for my Schock 15ft day-sailer and a number of others from him a while back and they were very professionally done.

5090 COMET