Antique Boat Museum in Clayton NY

[Don Frelier]

We spent most of the week in the Thousand Islands outside Cape Vincent.
It's been our vacation destination for most of the past 30 years.

The Antique Boat Museum is a great place to visit.
Check out a couple pictures:

 

[f569]

Cool pics. I like this type museum.
If I'm not mistaken, that's the engine that brought the P-51 Mustang into its own when the high altitude shortcomings of the original Allison became apparent. (Probably a comment better posted in the aircraft thread but the engine pic is here.)
Must have provided that hydroPLANE with plenty of giddy-up!

 

[Red63440]

Can’t mistake the sound of a P-51

 

[Imperial One]

Love these old boats. One of my friend's father owned and built the "Miss Supertest" boats. At one time Miss Supertest was the fastest boat in the world. If you lived along the St. Clair River in the late '50's or early 60's you might have heard Jim Thompson rumble by in his boat doing 140. You could also have seen it race on the Detroit river at that time. It had a Rolls Royce Griffon engine making around 2300 horse power. Here's a photo:

It had a short racing career, but a wildly successful one, culminating in 3 Harmsworth Trophy wins. The driver, Bob Hayward, was killed in Miss Supertest 2 in 1961 and the Thompson family never raced it again. Here is a great documentary about it:



After being on display for many years at the Ontario Science Centre it recently found a new home in London, Ontario with the Steve Plunkett auto collection. I lobbied hard to restore the boat and get it on the water but ultimately the decision was made to just return the boat to static display. The original Rolls Royce engine is long gone, along with all the spares which burnt up in a fire many years ago.

London was also the home to another famous race boat of the same era, owned by legendary big band leader Guy Lomardo, who was also born here. Here's a photo of it:

And a link to a story about it. I recall it had an Allison engine, but it wasn't anywhere near as powerful as the Rolls Royce.

https://www.bearmountainboats.ca/bl...e-of-heaven-restoring-guy-lombardos-tempo-vii

 

[Richard Cranium]

How about a 114 mph pontoon boat...

 

[91r/t]

Funny Don, we just spent last week and a half up there as well! Small world! We were camping in Wellesley Island state park.

 

[Skytrooper]

Love Clayton and the boat museum !

 

[Slap Stick]

The Chrysler Queen was powered by a 392 Hemi, not the RR.
Just think if it had been powered by the experimental inverted XIV-2220 Hemi.
https://www.allpar.com/mopar/hemi-aircraft.html

 

[Imperial One]

The Chrysler Queen was powered by a 392 Hemi, not the RR.
Just think if it had been powered by the experimental inverted XIV-2220 Hemi.
https://www.allpar.com/mopar/hemi-aircraft.html

Great article. Thanks for posting.

 

[Budnicks]

cool old (race) boats, thanks for sharing

 

[Budnicks]

There was a pretty good movie about 20 years ago
about the Miss Madison & Jim McCormick, low buck guys in 1971
backed by the town, Unlimited Hydroplane races
Madison Indiana, Gold Cup race, huge deal for the time
when the town was really struggling to survive
everything was being outsourced, people leaving in droves
they kept blowing the thing up, finally got N2O to work (somewhat)
(sound familiar ?)

 

[Hey-O]

How about a 114 mph pontoon boat...

Had a house there, been to so many shoot outs, been in one. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Don Frelier]

we just spent last week and a half up there as well! Small world! We were camping in Wellesley Island state park.

I put the boat in at Wellsley Island State Park last Sunday and we took a little ride around the area.
I think I was in Canada briefly, my kids warned me not to do that.
I told everyone to start coughing alot if we got stopped.

 

[91r/t]

Yeah my GPS told me the Canadian border which we were flirting with but there was no one around so I didn’t really give a **** either ha ha .