Miss Moonshine certainly isn’t one of the owner-operator cruising boats we usually write about, but it sure looks like fun.
Described as a Prohibition Era gentleman’s racer, the all-mahogany Miss Moonshine is the brainchild of Kevin Fitzke, the head of Fitzke Boatworks in Minneapolis. He’s working on a prototype and will have the first boat in the water next summer.
The 23-foot boat will be powered by a single 320-hp GM engine mounted amidships, with the prop and rudder aft. It will have a bow thruster, an accessory that’s unusual for 23-foot boats and one that definitely did not exist in the 1920s.
Fitzke is using modern epoxy cold-molding techniques for the new boat. They will require little maintenance, also a major change from the original wooden craft. The hull sides and deck are made from cold-molded, double-planked Honduran mahogany. The hull is cold-molded, triple-planked African mahogany.
Fitzke, a craftsman who has worked on Rivas, did a two-year wooden boating apprenticeship with Michel Berryer, a naval architect at Van Dam in Boyne, City, Michigan, learning the basics of hull design, hydrodynamics and CAD design.
He started with a blank slate for Miss Moonshine. The cockpit has handmade tuck-and-roll upholstery, like the classics of old, and Fitzke drew the helm with a nod to early Grand Prix racing cars, with a large wood-rimmed wheel and analog gauges.
The boat holds four, although that probably would be two adults and two children. It comes with a custom canvas cover and a custom trailer to help with launching/retrieving and transporting.
Read more at http://fitzkeboatworks.com
