I remember one of my friends had a brother who made one of them in his garage. Circa 1968. Stuck a 7.5 Merc on it, painted it yellow with black trim. I used to call it the hydro without sponsons. He launches, Sunday afternoon at Pottowatamee Park in St. Charles in August just before school...Planes off, bounces a bit, then levels off and gets to speed...Rounds the turn down by the 13th hole of the golf course, comes back around in front of the park, where, a guy just throttled down in a 21' rear steer Gar Wood barrel back inboard powered by a flat 6 Gray Marine motor....Anyone who has ever seen and old Gar Wood knows the rest of the story....Those things could lay 3' rollers that you could surf on without a pull rope...

So, Richie comes toward the pier and is going to jump the waves....It may have worked if the nose was able to lift over the wave....Instead Stuff! Water rips over the deck, hits Richie and knocks him into the Mercs tank, where, he held on for dear life.... Somehow, his dad told him it was OK to use a regular non returnable boat throttle, so, as the boat plowed through the wave, tossed Richie back, it was still going full throttle....It's kind of hard to steer from the back of the motor, but somehow, he used his feet as rudders and the thing kept flipping around in a circle until the reverb of th Gar Wood waves came off the concrete wall of the park...The boat tossed on it's side and the motor sucked in the Fox River then stopped...

When Richie got ashore ( towed by the Gar Wood making the wake) he was white as a ghost, his mom must have gotten 40 more wrinkles, and his dad poped the plugs, dried out the motor, and they went out again....

I think they got the plans in Popular Mechanics at the time, was a fun dad son project!