1960's Jet Canoe !

[Tom Shafer]

My canoe-builder-friend bought a contraption which bolted through the canoe floor, with a lawn-mower engine !
On the bottom. a water jet-pump that could swivel 180* for steering, and that it !
I "helped" with adapting a simple throttle for the B&S 3?HP motor, and a "tiller" handle for the gas tank.
The motor simply bolted onto the swivel 'deck' which had a rubber-cushioned 'hub' for the crankshaft.
He was a large man, and sat on a floor-cushion, to help prevent surprise baths !!!.
That's all I remember. Anybody know what/where/info about that contraption ?

( My GrandSon has a 10' flat-hull, and I happen to have a bran-new B&S 110cc engine. )

 

[loosescrew]

I seem to remember seeing something like that in the back of a magazine years ago, it was some sort of turbine/jet drive that would bolt through the bottom or rear corner of an existing hull. For some reason I seem to recall it was meant for a Lawnboy motor. I don't recall ever seeing on in person though. It looked like a kids toy of sorts. I couldn't picture a small mower engine making enough power to really be much fun. By the crude pics it looked more like a ducted prop set up than a true jet drive pump.

The best homebuilt set up I ever saw was a guy with an old wood garvey that took the inline six cylinder engine and three speed manual transmission out of a Chevy nova and mounted it in the boat sitting midship. He ran a short driveshaft to a prop under the boat using the parts taken from an old wood boat. He built a box over the driveshaft and mounted the seat form the same car, rigged up the clutch, throttle and shifter to the boat as well. It drove like a car, with three speeds and reverse. He used it for fishing for years, it was far from a recent build when I saw it.

The water pump simply drew water from a pvc pipe to a fitting through the hull, and it dumped the water out the lower hose to another pipe. the exhaust was in the air, a single piece of water pipe with a coffee can on a chain to keep the rain out when it sat.
It was crude but he went out in that thing every day for years.

The one thing that stuck in my mind about that thing was that all of the freeze plugs on the block were spackled up with orange silicone sealer because they rusted out in the saltwater.

There was another guy in the same area who did basically the same thing but he used an old flat head six cylinder from a 1940's Plymouth but he mounted a radiator up in the bow and ran it on fresh water vs the saltwater.

That boat was an externally ribbed aluminum hull. I remember it had a prop that stuck out the back that would break the surface as it turned. The boat had a long prop shaft that ran to the rear under the boat, all exposed, and the prop sat behind the boat being to large to fit beneath. It wasn't fast, but he too ran that daily to check his crab pots or trot lines. I do remember him getting towed in once with a crab pot all wrapped up around the prop though.