More Pictures Of My Guppy 13

Article By Shorty


guppy 13 sail up Here she is with her rig fully setup. Neat emblem, the two M's must stand for Melen Marine. I was looking at my missing "5" and thinking about the hull number, my boat is #245 made in October of 1975, and I know they were only produced in '74-'75, so this could have been one of the last ones made. Neat having one of only so few that were made.

It was a nice day to visit the dragon, the wind wasn't there as much as it could have been, but I had enough to get by.

The Guppy does pretty well at ghosting along in almost no wind, I think to be credited towards it's rather V shaped bottom. With just a little bit of wind, she would quickly speed up to 3.8 mph. If my calculations are correct, the theoretical hull speed of the guppy is 5.5 mph, but I suspect faster than that could be achieved on a reach because of the semi-planing hull.

To keep from launching my car, I made a really simple tounge extension for the trailer. It is just a couple of 2x4's, with a socket on one end, a piece of conduit stick up under where it meets the trailer socket, and a couple of cleates & rope that tie it to the trailer. It worked really well.

That crack in the keel turned out to be a gouge instead. I was really scratching my head trying to figure how someone could have gouged it there, until I saw how close the bunk boards get to the keel during launching. I can see that possibly the trailer wasn't dunked far enough, and the wind could have blown the boat sideways and into the boards.

I stripped off the surface paint, added more glass to the bottom of the keel and patched the gouge. The keel is a molded part of the hull that is later filled with concrete, which makes it so much stronger than a bolted on keel. The more I look at the boat, the more I am impressed with the designer who came up with it.