“There are no plans, and I don’t think there ever were, other than some notes on a legal pad,” said Walwork, who has spent much of his career working in fiberglass. It makes the boat easier to drive and more comfortable.” I find it amazing that Walwork is building these new Raveau boats completely from memory. “These continuation boats have a deep vee bottom with a variable deadrise that’s about 20 degrees at the transom. Photo: Mercury Marine Archives “The original boats had a flat bottom,” says Walwork, who spoke to me from his shop this week. The bottom, however, is radically different.Ī Raveau runabout at work at the Lake X test facility in the 1960s. The exceptions are a modern steering wheel and the lack of once-stylish “fins” on the aft gunwales. King received in February appears to be an exact replica of the 1961 model that was its inspiration, right down to the concave hull sides and the side spray rails. As it floats in the water, the Raveau 16 Dr. One of the latest went to his friend and dentist, Dr.

To date he’s built 30 boats, and only three orders remain on the list, to which no more names will be added. With a six-month lead time required to build each boat, Walwork started a waiting list that grew to include 17 names. Photo: Bob Walwork Collection Soon Walwork was taking orders for copies of this beautiful Raveau 16, and for a 20-foot example, each priced between $20,00 and $30,000.

Tailfins were a 1960’s styling affectation eliminated on the new boats. This 1961 Raveau Bomb, photographed for a Mercury brochure, was the inspiration for the Raveau 16 built for Dr. Raveau retired to his native France in 1963, and Walwork enjoyed a career working at several boat companies, and later as an independent design consultant based in Palmetto, Fla. The pair teamed up again in the early 1960s, when Walwork won several off-shore endurance races in the Miami area in Raveau hulls. Walwork worked with Raveau until the contact was fulfilled. Walwork had recently moved to Florida with his family after his parents sold a marina in Penn Yan, N.Y., where Bob had worked since he was a boy, and had started racing boats at age seven. One of the men hired to help build, test and race these boats was 20-year-old Bob Walwork. In 1959, Kiekhaefer signed Raveau to a one-year contract to build boats in Sarasota he would enter as an unofficial factory team in the new American Power Boat Association (APBA) Outboard Pleasure Craft racing classes. The project earned Mercury lots of national publicity, and the same motors were used to make a second 25,000 run, this time on 16-foot Raveau boats. 11, 1958, and 34 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes and 5.4 seconds later, the lead boat had covered 25,003.2 miles. The boats were to be re-fueled on the run, and stopped only for routine maintenance. Two were rigged with 30-gallon fuel tanks and headlights for Operation Atlas. In 1957, Raveau was hired by Mercury founder Carl Kiekhaefer to build boats for a top-secret project Kiekhaefer called Operation Atlas, a stunt that would have two boats powered by Mercury Mark 75 outboards run non-stop for 25,000 miles. Tom King photo Marcel Raveau was a highly-regarded builder based in Long Island, whose boats were very successful in the Albany-to-New York races staged on the Hudson River in the 1940s. Choose from several available seating configurations to accommodate your whole crew in comfort, and count on the 160 Super Sport to be ready for action.The classic “tower of power” in-line six-cylinder Mercury outboard looks perfect on the Raveau transom.

Exciting new features include dual aft swim platforms, a lockable storage compartment in the front of the console, and a stylish new rear-accent hull color. Marking a keel-up redesign for Boston Whaler’s popular Super Sport series, the 160 delivers effortless operation, low-maintenance durability and a smart, spacious layout. The 160 Super Sport® makes every outing safer, more comfortable and more fun.

Outboard runabout boat