In Our Wake: The Unsinkable Legend(s)

In 1961, the Space Age was in full swing. Nowhere was this better evidenced than on the cover of the May 19, 1961 issue of Life magazine. On the cover sat NASA astronaut Alan Shepard—the first American to fly to outer space—answering fan mail. Inside, on page 73, was a jaw-dropping photo of a mild-mannered looking Bostonian in a hat and tweed suit. He sat calmly on the stern quarter of a small, floating boat that was being split in half with a lumberjack saw. The headline read: “A Man in a Pickle, Unthinkable…Is Not Only Safe But Unsinkable.” Back in 1958, that man, Dick Fisher had the brilliant idea of melding two space-aged materials; fiberglass and expanding polyurethane foam. Fisher clamped an innovative and stable 13-foot fiberglass triple-vee hull and deck together. Then, leaving a hole at the bow to pour in the volatile foam brew, and others for gasses and expanding foam to escape, the concoction filled all the voids to create incredible strength and literal unsinkability. Fisher even Evinrude’ed the sawed off stern, circling his “Unibond”—built half boat around Life’s slack jawed photographers. Sales of Fisher’s “Boston Whaler” skyrocketed, and an “Unsinkable Legend” was born.

This article originally appeared in the November 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/in-our-wake-the-unsinkable-legends