It is currently 101 in the shade of my front porch. I am not out on the lake because I never go out on the weekends. That is, after all, the point of retiring on the lake. You never again have to compete with the yahoos for parking space at the ramp or listen to the excuse for music that blares from the speakers of their daddy's $40,000 wakeboard boat. Of course 90% of those overpriced specialty towboats will never see a towee rise into the air and do a flip or a 360 like they always show in the brochure photos, but the spoiled brats always feel as if they deserve a specialized wakeboard boat to show off to the girls in bikinis who line up for a ride. Well, enough of the curmudgeon rant about whippersnappers, or as I prefer to call them, white punks on dope. What an excellent album title that was, back when we bought albums at the record store instead of stealing music from the artists on the internet. Kudos to The Tubes for that glorious title!
The boat pictured is an F32 by Dave's Custom Boats, a brand covered on Page 337-8 of my 2010 book, Ker-Splash 2. Note the four pipes exiting the stern of this green monster. They lead to a pair of big-block, breathed-upon, as we used to say in the old days, engines. There must be some reason that three axles are on this trailer!
Dave's Custom Boats is just one of countless little-known boat manufacturers covered in the book. Don't be put off by the Volume 2 designation added to this book. All of the pertinent content of Volume 1 has been included in Volume 2. The naming of this book was a bit tricky. The first book, published in 2002, was entitled KER-SPLASH: Recreational Power Boaters Guide, an appropriate title for that book. Ker-Splash 2 is a whole lot more than just a second edition of the first book. The subtitle had to be changed to better reflect the state of the boating industry in 2010, as it had so drastically changed from that of 2002. There are no photos in the first book, but lots of them in the second. Every manufacturer's address and corporate alliance has been updated in the second edition, leaving much of the first edition woefully out of date. The second edition is printed in a larger format, too, so the book is considerably bigger in content than its simple page count might indicate.
Many readers have been coming here to NIAFS looking for information on several rare, specific boats. These particularly include several '90's jewels as the Four Winns Unlimiteds. the Bayliner Reflexx and Jazz mini-jets, and the Wellcraft Scarab Jet 19. No one else is paying attention to these sweetly satisfying boats from the '90's. If you want to read more about these and others like them, you just need to buy your own copy of Ker-Splash 2. The $19.95 Amazon price is a bargain! Where else are you going to get this information? The book brings together data and entertaining info on many, many, of these rare powerboat brands. If you just want a quick reference, and you do not own a Kindle, just download the free Kindle PC and then pay a measly $5 for this wonderful reference book. It is true that there is no substitute for owning the real thing, a print copy, for many reasons, but the Kindle PC version is a cheap alternative. The Kindle version does not display the image quality or the quick index of the print version, but what do you expect for $5? The few competing books available contain far less information at a much higher price! What are you waiting for? Summer is here and it's hot!
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