WE'VE SEEN IT All !!!

As we approach 45 years supplying boaters with quality new and used marine hardware, we've seen some pretty unusual rigs during that time. Pictured is a unique outboard motor powered submarine. We still haven't figured out how the outboard motor runs under water? We also supplied parts for the 50,000 gallon tank boat. Some youthful skippers got hold of a huge tank, put ballast in one end so it would float vertical, added living quarters, put mast and yard arms on the upper end and anchored it off Newport Beach all one summer. It was quite an attraction as it gently bobbed up and down like a pogo stick. In the fall, a tug towed tank boat out to sea so our innovative mariners could start on a voyage to Tahiti. About a week later it drifted ashore about 20 miles down the coast. Seems it had speed and steering issues? Flying saucer boat was totally cool. A 40' diameter disc shaped boat that looked like two silver pie tins joined together. It was painted silver, had diesel power and was seen about souther California waters for several years. People "not in the know" reported it quite often to the Coast Guard and other authorities.

Thus you can see that the crew at Minneys has supplied marine hardware, electronics, spars and thousands of other items to numerous "fruit cakes" through the years in their goofy attempts to improve on yacht design and performance. One of these days I will make mention of Edsel car boat (all hardware was from junked Edsel cars) and for extra floatation, styrafoam coffee cups were used. Also a good one was Missionary trimaran. Boat had no headroom, bilges were packed with water proof plastic bottles that held bible messages within, printed in 40 languages. What was really cool was the mechanical arrangement for delivering the messages. A sorta Rube Goldberg system of chains, pulleys and small conveyor belts powered by a small propeller outside the hull would deliver the bottles into the ocean at approximately "a message a mile." Other picture above is some of the 100's of flat top sheet and halyard winches you guys traded in for "self-tailers."