Posted by JRP on 12/06/17 - 2:36 PM
#6
crbenny wrote:
I'm actually surprised to see that the very first smirked center console, and very likely the most prized of classic Whalers isn't on the list....
Yeah, I thought about including the banana hulls. Maybe I should have? While technically they have smirks, I tend to think of them as "transition" boats between the very early Whaler designs and the Dougherty line-up that we know from the mid-1970s through mid-1990s.
I grew up very near to the Whaler factory in Massachusetts. Whalers were very popular on our local waters, and we often watched from the shoreline as new models were test-run through the river mouth. To say the banana hulls were controversial and not very well-received by the locals, is an understatement. When the newer smirked Montauk and Outrage designs came-out later in the 1970s, they were much more readily accepted.
I didn't like the banana hulls back then, but I admit the Outrage 21 has grown on me with time.