North Beach
Commander
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2008
- Messages
- 2,022
New folks are always contacting me with various Year/Model questions and I see posts all the time like "that bow rail or that stern light only came on the such and such model or year, so I thought I'd start a thread that just lists a few of the items we use to determine what boat you have.
Please keep in mind that most of my information covers the last couple years of the 50's, all of the 60's and about half of the 70's. After that Starcraft added so many models and variations of models it's really hard to guess what will crop up next.
This info covers aluminum Cabin boats and runabouts only. Once you inject the offshores and fishing boats, again, way too many variations and we have to look at each boat individually.
So I thought I'd start with Hull Types.
In the late 50's and the beginning of the 60's all of the models came with what Starcraft called the Semi Vee hull. That's pretty simple. It really looks almost flat at the stern. Here's a pic I stole from someone's restore thread.
This hull was used on all models until 1963, on the Jupiter in 64, and on all the 15 footers and smaller boats until sometime in the 70's.
In 1964 Starcraft introduced the Deep Vee hull on four models; Chieftain, Starchief, Sunchief, and Holiday (basically they only made changes to their 21'7" and 18' 4" hulls.
Since this hull was only used in the aluminum boats for one year, I couldn't find an example in the restoration forums so here's a pic from the 64 brochure.
In 1965 Starcraft offered the Concave Vee hull on the same four models and the Jupiter. This is also the first time that Starcraft used the V designation on all of the models with the Concave Vee so it was purely a marketing designation at that point and didn't really mean anything but the hull design was cutting edge and Starcraft has used this design for many years.
Here's the picture.
Sometime in the next few days I'll add another installment covering paint and interiors and dropped and added models.
These are all things that we use when we're trying to figure it out. Also it's not an exact science. People did things back then to make it harder on us. The po of my boat wanted to fish a lake with a 20' maximum restriction so he wrote a letter to the fish and game explaining that he was a war veteran and the manufacturer made a mistake on his title and now my boat is registered as a 20 footer instead of the actual 21'7"......
I have a copy of the letter.
Please keep in mind that most of my information covers the last couple years of the 50's, all of the 60's and about half of the 70's. After that Starcraft added so many models and variations of models it's really hard to guess what will crop up next.
This info covers aluminum Cabin boats and runabouts only. Once you inject the offshores and fishing boats, again, way too many variations and we have to look at each boat individually.
So I thought I'd start with Hull Types.
In the late 50's and the beginning of the 60's all of the models came with what Starcraft called the Semi Vee hull. That's pretty simple. It really looks almost flat at the stern. Here's a pic I stole from someone's restore thread.
This hull was used on all models until 1963, on the Jupiter in 64, and on all the 15 footers and smaller boats until sometime in the 70's.
In 1964 Starcraft introduced the Deep Vee hull on four models; Chieftain, Starchief, Sunchief, and Holiday (basically they only made changes to their 21'7" and 18' 4" hulls.
Since this hull was only used in the aluminum boats for one year, I couldn't find an example in the restoration forums so here's a pic from the 64 brochure.
In 1965 Starcraft offered the Concave Vee hull on the same four models and the Jupiter. This is also the first time that Starcraft used the V designation on all of the models with the Concave Vee so it was purely a marketing designation at that point and didn't really mean anything but the hull design was cutting edge and Starcraft has used this design for many years.
Here's the picture.
Sometime in the next few days I'll add another installment covering paint and interiors and dropped and added models.
These are all things that we use when we're trying to figure it out. Also it's not an exact science. People did things back then to make it harder on us. The po of my boat wanted to fish a lake with a 20' maximum restriction so he wrote a letter to the fish and game explaining that he was a war veteran and the manufacturer made a mistake on his title and now my boat is registered as a 20 footer instead of the actual 21'7"......
I have a copy of the letter.
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