Stars & Stripes Ski Nautique ???

The flames aren't original either i assume?

GlassSeeker wrote: We're dudes we have to see pictures!!!!

My wife reminds me constantly "Men are VISUAL"!!!

Gray..... I did get a response from Ralph Meloon Jr. and he does not have but a "faint" recollection of such a boat, and he does't think that it came from the factory with those graphics. I am still working on trying to catch up with Walt Meloon Jr. to show him the photo and test his memory!
Art C.

I don't see nothin' wrong with a little bump n' grind.

Yep, I was just getting ready to say that we do have a member that worked for West Coast Correct Craft in the year 2000.


Q- so, I'm assuming, no outdoor grinding today either.

quinner wrote: Not necessarily, HW as an example, he's pretty "special", in a licking school bus windows kind of way, don't think his parents ordered him that way??

Really Quinner, you are seriously deranged (and extremely funny as well)

I plan to talk with both Walt and Ralph Meloon Jr. as soon as I can carve some time out of my schedule!
Art C

Joel
I noticed your boat is missing the usual flag decals that went on the sides of the boat near the stern. Total wild guess, but maybe whoever made those flag decals at the time made special custom ones for your boat. Both have stars on top and stripes on the bottom. Again wild wild guess!

Rich

Morfoot wrote: 62 wood wrote: OverMyHead wrote: It is so cool to have you here on the site Art. THANKS! .............. X2!!!!    All more the reason for y'all to come on down to play on the river in March. Art hangs with us for the weekend and as we all know, is a wealth of information and history. Art, I wish there was a way to plug your brain into a hard drive and download all you know about CC but I don't think there is a computer big enough to hold all the info. Thanks for all you add to the site and the history of our beloved Correct Crafts!

Tim, The offer of Southern hospitality is a huge temptation. There are so many of you down there I would like to meet. I believe the only reason a CCFAN does not make a re-union is that they give themselves permission not to. One of these years I will take my own advice, man up, and get down there in March. Unfortunately this year I gave myself permission not to. Thanks for the Invite though. I will be watching the SJRR thread with jealous eyes.

OverMyHead wrote: It is so cool to have you here on the site Art. THANKS!

.............. X2!!!!   

I don't think that's Russ' Mom in the boat. That photo was shot in Florida at a lake near the factory, and to my knowlede his mom never came to Florida. He is still around, skiing in Texas, I think.
Saw him in recent years, but don't remember where.

You certainly do good detective work. The CC dealer in those days was in fact Ralph Meloon, a son of Mr. Ralph to whom Dave refers in his post. Angie is correct, it was in Sacramento. Ralph Jr., as we call him, is now a bush pilot in Alaska and I can get in touch with him and send him a copy of your photo and see whether he remembers anything about the graphics. It will take me a while to get in touch with him.

You are correct, according to Dave (Godfather) there is no information other than the shipping invoice, and it doesn't say anything about the graphics. If it was done at West Coast, there would be no records, but as I said above, I will inquire of Ralph Jr.   

Insofar as to the references to the Asians painting the boats, actually, Ronnie Arnold probably painted 90% of the '73 through '76 boats. He was the one who so badly wanted to use flame. We had hired another painter named Paul Anderson, and it was he who taught Ronnie to do flame. Shortly after that Ronnie was promoted to the prototype shop. He is the one who did the work on the rear deck of the SN when we changed from the aluminum clearance bar to the raised fiberglass on the 1977 rear deck. We then had a Vietnamese named Dai Nguen painting the boats along with Paul. Dai is the guy who painted Ski Nautique on the 1961 boat which some of you are familiar with, and when I met the truck with the boat on it at Callaway Gardens for the '77 Masters, I noticed that Nautique was misspelled! Got some acetone at the hardware store and took it off.

To the best of my knowledge, the graphics on some of the '73s were done by hand by a sign painter. We then had stencils cut, the stencil was a one-time stencil on frisket paper. It was stuck to the boat, masked off, sprayed, and pulled off. The stencils were what enabled us to do the black shading around the perimeter of the letters, that might have started in '75, I'm not sure. Ronnie Arnold came up with that idea. He simply took an airbrush and went around the letters before removing the stencil.

Walt Meloon Jr. was President in those days, his father was the CEO. Walt made all the decisions about what went on in the factory. I will show him the photos of the graphics and ask whether he recalls anything about any boats being painted that way. We still don't have an explanation for the vinyl graphics, though. As someone said, who had a computer in 1975, let alone a computer-driven vinyl cutter.

I spoke with Mr. Ralph on Friday with Larry Shea. We ask him and showed him the photo of this boat and he said, he does not recall this boat.. Or the factory doing this design to an Ski. I think the dealer can answer more, but they are no longer open. But I will still do some more digging.

Could this be Stiffler's mom, from 1975 ?

edit: Appologies- bad joke, bad timing, wrong Stiffler.

edit: The part of this story that I do believe is that the boat in question, left the factory in Orlando looking exactly like the '75 in this pic.
(w/optional ladder)

Thanks for pursuing this and sharing .its really pretty interesting