Sea Sled madness. It’s in my brain.

I don't think fuel burn would be an impediment, any more than a similarly powered "normal" boat, but the air bleeding back into the props might be a source of problems.

 

From contemporary reports, the entrained air passed out under the transom right in the middle. Twins had no problems. Where they used a single surface prop, they used a huge one. Miss Lakeside, seen here, has a 2' prop, on a 6' wide boat.

 

Thanks for the helpful information BB. I'm in touch with DC.

 

Mr. E - I've read too much Sea Sled history to believe that the basic Sea Sled is not a competent boat in rough water. Sure, it's got its issues but that's not one of them. Now some Sleds were less than stellar in the ride quality department. I owned two of the modern Sleds (22' and 29') and they had their problems. Our 18' prototype in her final form was a sweetheart that ran like a charm over 2' bay chop, at any angle to the wind, at 30 mph and was safe in bigger seas at lower speeds.

As I previously indicated, we got too cocky from our success with the 188 and made some bad assumptions with regard to the 270. One of the negative results was a ride in a chop that was unacceptably harsh. We were confident that we knew what to do to address that and a couple of other issues....but I've already explained why we shut down.

 

The 22' and 29' sleds AirFlite refers to here are Salvatore Iannotti's builds. Those significantly deviated from Hickman's boats. Guy thought he knew better.

AirFlite 's 18 footer was an absolute sweetheart. I've got a video I'm editing. Up soon. The boat he refers to that didn't work out as well is the larger one in his pictures. Changes to Hickman's original design, not enough testing.

 

That's quite a lot of prop, for the size of transom.

 

We never ran a formal fuel consumption test on the 270, as we decided it wasn't ready for prime time before we got to that point. I used her for my own recreation quite extensively and achieved roughly 1.5 miles per gallon cruising at 38 mph. This was with 1994 225 Mercs with carbs., not nearly as smooth running and fuel efficient as todays monster injected, often supercharged OBs.

While the 270 had a strong hole shot, she was not happy cruising at speeds under 32 mph. The sweet spot for cruising was 34-40 mph. We believe that we built in too much lift forward and too little aft. We were confident that we had the specific solution to that..... One thing that was fun with both boats was running them on the flats. At 45 mph, the 270 would run in 18" of water, the 188 in 10" -12". I had many much smaller craft run aground trying to follow the 270 across the flats into Cabbage Key's Bar and Restaurant.

 

Got the superstructure going back on.

 

Is that light I see at the end of the tunnel?!

 

Like eating sand. Slow and painful. But here is more progress on Serenity.

 

Huge progress!
Nice photos!
Good work.

 

It looks fragile, but I was doing chinups off the forward beam, and its canted 15° forward. 240 pounds in my work gear. A reasonable test.

 

Big visible changes! Not much more satisfying than that!

 

I see your "slave" is still on the job DC, what a honey !