a friend's Donzi on East Niagara River.
Thread: Magnum-Donzi
Results 1 to 20 of 31
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11-07-2009 12:47 PM
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11-07-2009 12:58 PM
WoW, That is a rare Donzi 6ft beam "Banana" boat, only a handful made.
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11-07-2009 04:43 PM
I saw that boat and spoke to the owner at the antique boat show at the buffalo launch club a couple months back, my brother has a bunch of pics of it from that day. It was definitly one nice looking boat
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11-07-2009 09:29 PMThe original banana boat......
The beam was a bit over 6 feet and at speed had a BIG HABIT of wanting to plane on the freeboard rather than the bottom. Can you say Chine walk??
Don was known to push through some of the bad habits of the early designs..... but even he had his limit and used common sense when it came to this design.Light travels faster than sound....that is why some people appear bright until we hear them speak!!
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11-08-2009 03:36 PMThe original Banana Boat, indeed. Who came up with the name originally?
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11-08-2009 05:39 PM
Thanks for posting the pics. !
A great piece of Aronow history preserved.
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11-08-2009 09:37 PM
WOW , it sure reminds me of an old Coyote with an up swept deck and just curious why was everything a natural Banana boat because they were all skinny at that time or was a Banana boat actually a Bert or a Coyote because it was skinny also or could it have been a Cig as far as that goes and not to mention a Mag that i owned that was yellow and a 79 to boot and once again just curious .
Last edited by Offshore Ginger; 11-08-2009 at 10:33 PM.
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11-09-2009 02:18 AMaccording to Michael Aronow only 5 were originaly built,2 for himself,2for Kiekhaefer, and one for Ed Kendall. Performance was incredible for the era but the boat suffered from a couple of phisics problems,1st torque steer due to bad X-dimensions for available drives at the time. trim on the port plans was always on positive to keep the boat on plane and going straight, no port trim and boat would fall on it's side and veer to the starboard. 2nd, boat had no free board for stand up driving, so big guys like Don would have a top heavy affect on the boat. Cool ,fast, but you had to pay attention.
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11-09-2009 02:58 AMIN 1967/68 Five 27 experimental magnums were built,not to be confused with the other 27' mags.they had extremely narrow beams 6'6" , All 5 were built in yellow gel coat and DON coined them the bananas - so all offshore boats have slang names like Cigarette , Cigar, Banana, Scarab,regardless if they are or not.
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11-09-2009 09:43 AMThose boats were built in 65/66 at Donzi. 1st one had a 427 turbo daytona on a vee drive. Went 75mph when the next fastest boat was in the middle 60's. Unfortunately, it was just before dependable trimtabs were made, and it would jump over the average bridge in mid-porpoise.
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11-09-2009 11:10 AM
Great information guys! thank you! This boat does have the vee drive.
I did get a ride on it so now I can say I rode in a piece of history.
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11-09-2009 11:51 AM
FASTERDAD , where in west mich is your location ?
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- Join Date
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- West Michigan
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