muddyboots wrote:
when I was a kid a friend of mine had a boat made out of a pt boat hull. This was [30 years ago] in BIloxi. I always wonder if this was a higgins or an elco or what.
whistlingdeathcorsairs wrote:
if it was 30 years ago, around 1979 or 1980, it wasn't a pt boat. The mahagony hull would have been very rotted like all the boats would have been. Plus the hull would have been 40 plus years old, not something many people wanted anything to do with.
Sure, it would have been uncommon to find a WWII built PT boat hull still operating 34-39 years years after it was first launched. And yes, maybe Gus actually converted a later crash/rescue boat or a Vietnam-era PTF "Nasty" and stretched the truth a bit. But, I see no reason to dimiss the story completely out of hand .. especially based on a premise that is demonstrably flawed.
For example ...
PT-657 started life as a 78' Higgins and sails to this day (March 2011) out of San Diego as the charter fishing vessel "Mailihini."
http://www.malihinisportfishing.com/
PT-486, an 80' Elco, ran tourists on sightseeing and whale watching excursions from Wildwood, NJ (first as "Sightseer" and later as "Captain Schumann's Big Blue") for 50 years (1952-2002) before being sold as the basis of a PT-109 replica.
PT-305, a 78' Higgins now under restoration at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, was shortened and modified for civilian use after the war .. as a New York area tour boat until 1988, followed by a further 12 year stint as a hard-working oyster seed dredge on the Chesapeake Bay.
PT-309, another 78' Higgins, likewise found post-war employment in the fishing industry before being acquired for restoration and preservation by the Nimitz Museum in 1994.
All of these WWII PT boats managed to survive by "working for a living," fully exposed to the elements, for five decades or more .. and these are just the ones that I could find with online photographic evidence of them still in the water after 1979/80. There are mentions of several others, like the ex-Fire Island ferry "Beachcomber IV"/PT-459 and Clark Gable's former yacht "Tarbaby VI"/PT-615, that only left their natural element in the last few years and are now awaiting restoration (or possible sale) with "Fleet Obsolete" in Kingston, NY.
http://www.pt728.com/I guess all of the above is just a long way of saying I don't have any troble imagining that some 30 years ago Gus and young Muddyboots shared some good times on an another altered (but, genuine) World War Two "Mosquito boat" who's luck finally ran out shortly thereafter.
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It survived because it wasn't made of mahogany...everybody knows, all mahogany boats rotted away before 1980! 
