SBU12 and their Navy Offshore Race Boats

[unclebilly]

I’ve been thinking about posting about this for a few years. The recent thread about the Enterprose got me looking for more information on the US Navy Fountain Offshore powerboats that were used in Desert Storm. Until recently, I was unable to find anything online about these boats or any photos. Then I found a website that has stories of those who served on them... pretty cool.









The neat thing is that my dad bought one of these back in the early 90s. He bought a 33’ Fountain and a 39’ Chris Craft Scorpian. Both came without engines.

We painted the Scorpian, cleaned up all of the chaff in in and sold it without engines. It had a chart of Kuwait harbour in it.

Dad still has the Fountain. We did quite a bit of work on it fixing stress cracks and painted it. We powered it with BMW marine engines (we had them). Here are some photos...





















Who here knows these boats?

[unclebilly]

[unclebilly]

So nobody here knows these boats?

Here are a few more work in progress photos of the work in progress. I can’t find any of the Scorpian...





The Fountain is foam core construction with vinyl water resin. I remember the guys at Fountain were somewhat surprised that we had this when we called to get resin specs for the repairs.

I went to look at another to buy in about 1994 and by this time the navy was cutting 3’x2’ holes in the side of them to deter people from fixing them up.

[kach22i]

I don't know anything about them, can you post the website that you mentioned?

Are these a true planing hull in the traditional sense?

[Seahawk]

The Special Boat Units have more cool toys than you can imagine.

I helped procure a lot of UAS for the DEVGRU in Virginia Beach and the hangers were filled with afloat goodness.

Cool story, btw. Love it.

[unclebilly]

The website where I finally found some photos and info is:

Special Boat Unit - 12

The website is pretty disjointed and you have to click on the links to find the photos, etc.

I think the photo with the seals and the inflatable on the bow may actually be my dad's boat based on the damage to the gel-coat and the bent hand rail.

Kachi - these are a full on planing hull. The original engines were 561 HP big block chevy engines with merc out drives.