Anyone familiar with a 26' Viper Center Console boat?

[top1000nole]

Hey all,

I am selling my Spectre tomorrow and have found possibly the next project. Catch is, in all my boat forum travels I have never heard of a Viper. Only info I have found after scouring the web is they built a 33 and 26 out of West Palm Beach. Anyone have any good info from me on the builder. Thanks in advance.

[Jay R.]

I am pretty sure this was someone building boats out of their back yard. I was a splash of another brand. Maybe an Avanti? I think the 33 was anyway. If you look on The Hull Truth you may find some more info. Good luck with it!

http://flcompanydb.com/company/P9600...beach-inc.html

[FUJIMO]

...and the avanti was a splash. they were all splashes of cigarette or magnum hulls, with all sorts of decks over the years...

[top1000nole]

I am pretty sure this was someone building boats out of their back yard. I was a splash of another brand. Maybe an Avanti? I think the 33 was anyway. If you look on The Hull Truth you may find some more info. Good luck with it!

http://flcompanydb.com/company/P9600...beach-inc.html

yea really not much at all on THT either.. guy says its all composite but that doesn't mean is built right. Humm

[rgsauger]

Is it priced like a boat nobody ever heard of?

[Chaz]

Back in the heyday of the Quick-16 series at Moroso Motorsports park / PBIR I raced Joe Pinder in the finals. We made a deal to split the money. My friend told me I was an idiot for doing that , he said , Joe has never won a race in his life . We raced , I won. When we in the tower getting paid , Joe turned his check over signed it and handed it to me. he said, I'll be up Monday to give you a real deposit on a new car. He wound up buying five or six chassis from me . I have been back and forth to his shop more times than I can count.
He started out with a flats boat. Looked a lot like a Hugh's or Maverick .. Took one to the Miami boat show , and was swamped with orders from then on. I can't tell you where the 26 came from .. but I know that Birdsall Marine built all the accessory's for it. They were putting two Mann diesels in a 33 one day that I was down there , I teased him that the bottom looked like the 36 Dakota built in Stuart , and the top looked like a Rybovich or a Doug Smith .. He said , they all fit inside a 39 Cig .. the top , yea is a little of both.
When the bottom fell out of the market in the early 2000's he told me that he was going to close his doors. I said why don't you go back to building the flats boat , they sold like hotcakes when you were doing those. He said , there ain't no money in little boats and closed up shop shortly after that.
I guess a lot of guys got spoiled during the boom years when money really wasn't an issue. But I can't help but think that if small boats paid for the building, new trucks , put his daughter thru collage , race cars , living quarters trailers , etc. that they should be good enough to keep the doors open thru the lean years.
I'm no boat builder, but I do know that Joe always took pride in the boats and cars he built. I really don't think it's in his nature to spit out junk to make a dollar today and not worry about tomorrow.
I haven't spoke to him in close to a decade now , but I know that Bruce L. at Birdsall and him were / are good friends , racing partners . He would know as much as anyone about the boats built at Viper. Might be worth a call …

[FUJIMO]

...frank passie built the dakota yachts 36 & 32 in lauderdale off sunrise blvd for the owner named joe. different joe. frank aquired the molds from joe. frank continued to build them for a number of years. he then sent the tooling to the middle east where they continued to build them, for less cost, and ship them back over here & use/sell them over there. the tooling was eventually sent back here to florida & then sold to sonic when they had moved up to the stuart airport. then to CSI incorporated, also at the airport...then on to the ft. pierce location... yes, the dakota hulls were cigarette & magnum derivatives as i mentioned. the 36 dakota was from the old 9' 4'' beam (wide beam)x 36 cigarette hull with the knuckle in the sides. the 32 hull was tooled from the old 27 magnum hull as was about 100 other boats companies hulls were in the 70's, 80's & 90's... yes, the vipers came from aronow hulls as well. the vipers though, were not from the dakota molds, even though the hulls were the same. joe pinder still lives in loxahatchee i believe...

[Chaz]

Well Fugi, ya got some of that right ..
I never said that the Viper and Dakota's came out of the same molds. I said … no , go back and read it again for yourself ..
Frank built Dakota boats in Stuart , until he lost it to the bank.
Doug Samson who had just sold Florida R.F.Labs for $27,000,000.00+ was looking for something to do with his money beside give it to Uncle Sam. He bought the assets from the bank. Frank came onboard for a short while to help them get going again. My friend Steve was V.P. of Mfg. and gave me the job of building the windless anchor guide/roller parts, rub rail rear corners and end caps. Also the closure ball mount for the electrical box's.
I think Samson figured out the old saying about making a million in the boat building industry … and sold the assets to Sonic. And then everything went to Ft. Pierce.
Steve and I drew up some plan's for Big Tony that involved a hoist system for dumpsters at construction sites, but nothing ever became of it. By then , the Sonic problem's were in full swing .. and I lost track of all of them but Steve. Him and his wife are still our neighbors , and we try to break bread together at least once a month. I think the girls have plans to take us to Merritt Island for the next Space-X launch …

[FUJIMO]

yes, you are correct on all of that chaz. its been a lot of years you know. used to remember details very well, not so much after retirement sets in...you will see what i mean in a couple years, lol. but, no...i did not mean it to sound like the viper came out of the dakota hull mold, just that they were very simular, like a million others were/are from aronow hulls... I knew frank passie for a long time. he owned new river yacht refinishing in 70's, then moved it into the same large building as velocity in pompano beach for quite a few years with his young wife, then went on to do the dakota stuff for years in lauderdale. anyways, many years later, getting older, he was a manufacturers rep for nice marine parts like "Orcas" stainless deck hardware, Zieger Steering out of Ohio, and so on. Franks a nice guy, hope he's still well, as he smoked like a chimney his whole life. Last i remember he retired to a nice mobile home park up in Palm Coast somewhere.

[Chaz]

I can relate, my "sometimers" is runnin on about 20% these days ...
I smoked three packs a day myself .. until one day I figured I was gonna stop one way or the other .. first two weeks were the worst, but I put me there so it was up to me to get me out .. Twenty + years now ..
Your a valuable source of information (and pics) I just didn't want to be misquoted .. It's all good with me ..
Like I said before I'm no boat builder, my wife says when I do glass or paint, it looks like a case of self "tar and feather~ment". But when I'm around boat molds, I look at the arbor around the parameter to see how used up it is. And the steel frame supporting the mold. Some of those frames and "repair jobs" leave, well, a bit to be desired ..
The thing that impressed me the most that Frank did, was a full size table layout of the wiring harness. Everything branched out to it's proper location on the table and was transferred directly to the boat. Shows experience and sure beats .. hey fish me a couple wires thru here, under that, over the other thing … after it's all sealed together .

[FUJIMO]

The thing that impressed me the most that Frank did, was a full size table layout of the wiring harness. Everything branched out to it's proper location on the table and was transferred directly to the boat. Shows experience and sure beats .. hey fish me a couple wires thru here, under that, over the other thing … after it's all sealed together .

...I showed frank this in 1984... it was part of a manufacturing mindset called "just in time manufacturing" that had worked well in japan at the time. i also introduced frank to the first 1708 Biax material, kevlar & kevlar hybrids, AME4000 (Ashland Modified Epoxy) resins, vinylester resins, tooling resins, cobalt, vacuum bagging, prefabbed stringer arrangements, etc... frank was older than me, but he always liked to learn new stuff. he was an interesting guy & we clicked, if you know what i mean.