Healey Marine

By John Sprinzel

During my visit to Sugar Lake, Minnesota, for the Austin-Healey Club Conclave, it was a real delight to see a virtual armada of beautiful wooden-hulled Healey Speedboats at the meet. An even greater thrill was for fellow guest Bob Olthoff and I to be taken for a spin in John May’s immaculate version. The Austin-Healey Club of America’s president, Gary Lownsdale, brought the family fleet of Healey Marine products and son Charlie later waterskied behind his own boat, which was fitted with a 33hp Evinrude outboard motor.

When I joined the Donald Healey Motor Company in 1960, the boat venture was beginning to wind down, as so many companies had entered the field of boat building. Fiberglass was less expensive and rapidly became the material of choice. The original hulls were made of wood, a far more skilled process than the later plastic moldings. Also, the aroma of wood shavings made for a far more pleasant workshop atmosphere than the pungent smell of resin, which stayed as an acrid reminder in both boats and cars for many years after manufacture.

Originally, when Donald proposed making a Healey Speedboat in the mid-1950s, he and Stirling Moss had spent quite a bit of time in Nassau in the Bahamas. Both were enthusiastic about waterskiing, so it would have been natural for the “Old Man” to interest himself in producing a better boat. Also, with the production of Healey cars now in the hands of the Austin Motor Company and Abingdon looking after the rally program, there was probably not enough action in Warwick to fully occupy Donald’s fertile mind. In his biography, he says he managed to persuade the others that speedboats could become the toys of the masses, but I’m pretty certain that what he proposed was usually what happened no matter how strong the debate.

The first version of the Healey Ski-Master was designed in Bridport in England’s West Country by Geoffrey Lloyd, and was built in plywood with an outboard motor supplied by the U. Scott Atwater Company. I have come across one of these early versions, restored and now in storage in Oregon, although this has a 1956 Mercury Thunderbolt outboard, probably the owner’s choice in place of the original specification. Hopefully, this historic Healey boat might appear at the 2002 Healey 50^th anniversary “Open Roads” meeting at Lake Tahoe.

The boats in Minnesota were all the later versions with inboard engines. Generally, these boats were fitted with the 1500 Austin-Healey Marine engine. It was basically a marine version of the 1498cc BMC series B units with twin carburetors, as used in the first MG sports cars. Early models used the Morris Navigator transmission, but due to its tendency to creep in neutral, the American Warner Velvet Drive, which was hydraulically operated, was fitted to subsequent production versions. Stirling did much of the publicity for the Healey ski boats, and was an enthusiastic owner.

Among the various experimental versions was one fitted with Wally Hassan’s Coventry Climax engine. Climax, you will recall, became the basis of Britain’s Motor Racing endeavors before a change in regulations turned this task to the Ford Cosworth project. Other models of the boat featured much larger Austin Healey engines, the full Grand Prix Climax motor, producing some 180 horsepower, and even a Jaguar-powered version for Sir William Lyons, the boss of the Jaguar Car Company.

Demand for the ski boats was excellent, and 1,750 were built and sold, mainly through the network of MG and Austin dealers throughout the world. Production of the wooden versions was moved to a furniture manufacturer in Yorkshire, but before too long the switch to fiberglass enabled the entire boat to be produced at the Cape in Warwick. The success of Healey’s product was copied by a number of others, as production of plastic hulls was a far simpler matter. While most were certainly not up to the quality of the original, such competition drove down the prices and made it difficult to maintain profitability in the Warwick operation. Making money out of boat building was never easy, especially in a product that involved so much labor-intensive craftsmanship.

It was enjoyable to see the wooden versions at Sugar Lake, all in superb condition and several on original Healey Trailers. It was obvious that these trailers had been made by a sports car manufacturer with sophisticated suspension, either with canted or transverse springs, to ensure that transportation and road holding were up to the standard demanded by Donald Healey, who was always the perfectionist.