| Posted: September 29 2006 at 14:03 | IP Logged
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Back in 1959/1960 my parents (I was only 4/5 years old) co-owned an Elco.
I always thought it was a 1929, 57', but now there's some confusion and my
parents say it was something different. But anyway, it has a sad
ending.
The boat's name was Salani (I think that's the right spelling)
and they took it up to The Thousand Island to do some diving off it. They ended
up having to bring across Lake Ontario late in the season and were rushing to
get back in time before the locks closed for the year. Lake Ontario was rough
but they had to cross anyways. They didn't get very far when the slight crack
in the hull (left over from when she was a radio ship in the Mediterranean in
WWII) opened up. They lost her off of Galloo Island. No
one was hurt, the Coast Guard took the guys off the boat. The following summer
they dove on her and removed some stuff. The only thing I remember for sure is
the port hole which they put in a fireplace my parents had built years later.
But anyway, she was a neat boat. I thought
it was neat in that I had my very own bunk and didn't have to share it with my
sister. I remember waking up once in the middle of the night to some banging
going on. We were going through a lock and someone dropped the lines. The bow
of the Salani was hitting one side of the lock and the stern was hitting the
other. Another time, this time it was in the middle of the day, we went under a
bridge and no one took the mast (as in where the burgees flew) down. Well,
needless to say, the bridge took the mast down. It funny what things stick in
your mind when you're just a kid.
Here's a photo of her. I hope to go to
Mystic CT sometime and see if I can find anything about her in the old Elco
archives.
__________________ Terri Parrow
Vice President
BoatUS Internet Operations
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