This looks like a pair of early Jet boats. I can’t place the make or model but from the research I did it looks like consumer jet boats came out in the early 1960’s and there were quite a few companies producing them. Any help out there with this?
Tags: boats, historic photograph, jet boats, transportation, vintage photography, watercraft
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the pilot of the left boat looks like old man Huckins son.
it also looks like they are in the Ortega river near the intersection with Cedar Creek, not far from the Huckins boatyard.
check with the Huckins family.
There was a company that built formed plywood hulled boats like the ones in the picture – Borum Boat Works. They were located on the river off of Riverside Avenue about where Blue Cross is today. My brother Johnny Dent had one – I believe the boat was a 17′ Borum. It was quite a boat – we skied behind it in the river and also on Smith Lake near Keystone. My cousins who lived in Miami ended up with the boat and raced it. We have pictures of my brother driving the boat that were made for advertising purposes – they fixed him up with a fake family and the ‘wife’ was the BEAUTIFUL Neesie Ostner. Of course, they were about 10 years older than me.
One or both of these could be Borums. My grandfather Otis founded the Borum Boat Co. in 1940, and early on he manufactured them under the name SpeedyCraft. Later he just called them Borum Boats. When I was born (in 1970), my father worked at the headquarters plant located off University Blvd. Later, they moved the plant to the old Ford Motor Co. facility off Talleyrand Ave., right on the riverfront (under the Matthews Bridge). Borum Boats shut down in 1990, and my grandfather passed away in 2000, but my dad (now retired) is still designing boats on the side. Anyway, he can probably identify these boats for you. Coincidentally, my brother Marc (who lives in Jacksonville) worked for a long time at Huckins Marine and knows that family well.