![]() As it floats in the water, the Raveau 16 Dr. One of the latest went to his friend and dentist, Dr. To date he’s built 30 boats, and only three orders remain on the list, to which no more names will be added. With a six-month lead time required to build each boat, Walwork started a waiting list that grew to include 17 names. Photo: Bob Walwork Collection Soon Walwork was taking orders for copies of this beautiful Raveau 16, and for a 20-foot example, each priced between $20,00 and $30,000. Tailfins were a 1960’s styling affectation eliminated on the new boats. This 1961 Raveau Bomb, photographed for a Mercury brochure, was the inspiration for the Raveau 16 built for Dr. Raveau retired to his native France in 1963, and Walwork enjoyed a career working at several boat companies, and later as an independent design consultant based in Palmetto, Fla. The pair teamed up again in the early 1960s, when Walwork won several off-shore endurance races in the Miami area in Raveau hulls. Walwork worked with Raveau until the contact was fulfilled. Walwork had recently moved to Florida with his family after his parents sold a marina in Penn Yan, N.Y., where Bob had worked since he was a boy, and had started racing boats at age seven. ![]() One of the men hired to help build, test and race these boats was 20-year-old Bob Walwork. In 1959, Kiekhaefer signed Raveau to a one-year contract to build boats in Sarasota he would enter as an unofficial factory team in the new American Power Boat Association (APBA) Outboard Pleasure Craft racing classes. The project earned Mercury lots of national publicity, and the same motors were used to make a second 25,000 run, this time on 16-foot Raveau boats. 11, 1958, and 34 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes and 5.4 seconds later, the lead boat had covered 25,003.2 miles. The boats were to be re-fueled on the run, and stopped only for routine maintenance. Two were rigged with 30-gallon fuel tanks and headlights for Operation Atlas. In 1957, Raveau was hired by Mercury founder Carl Kiekhaefer to build boats for a top-secret project Kiekhaefer called Operation Atlas, a stunt that would have two boats powered by Mercury Mark 75 outboards run non-stop for 25,000 miles. Tom King photo Marcel Raveau was a highly-regarded builder based in Long Island, whose boats were very successful in the Albany-to-New York races staged on the Hudson River in the 1940s. Read our full review of the Chaparral 21 H2O OB Sport, or view listings on classic “tower of power” in-line six-cylinder Mercury outboard looks perfect on the Raveau transom. That’s the kind of thinking gleaned from larger models and something that found its way into Chaparral’s entry level H2O series. The stowage compartment lids also hold up the left and right sides of the sun pad to create a chaise longue. One of the more innovative features of the 21 H2O OB Sport is the rear sun pad, which conceals a giant stowage compartment inside, a walk-through to either side once you flip up the bolster. A bimini top is optional, as is the towing tower, but colored gelcoat on the hullsides is standard, and that often costs extra on boats in this category. That certainly applies to the 21 H2O OB Sport, which comes standard with a 150-horse Yamaha outboard with a three-blade stainless-steel propeller. That makes for a much nicer entry-level boat. For starters, Chaparral builds a lot of different kinds of boats, and the technology, techniques and materials from its larger boats often trickle down into its smaller models. ![]() ![]() Chaparral 21 H2O OB Sport Chaparral 21 H2O OB Sport With retail prices starting at $37K and change, the Chaparral 21 H20 OB sport makes a lot of sense. ![]()
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