A New Package Arrived Yesterday

The bilge vents I won on eBay finally came in yesterday. I waited around the house on December 25th to be the highest bidder and after much aggravation they were shipped a week ago, at last.

After much thought and planning last month, I realized that with the rear fin and deck on my Batboat I would not have access to the engine if there is a problem out on water. Therefore, I plan to drastically alter the boat by removing the center fin and deck and replacing them with two fins, one on each side. Both in correct look and proportion to the original 1966 TV Batboat.

The deck has to go anyway. It is made of wood and in bad shape.

My overall idea is to transform this into a combination of the original 1966 Batboat, the 1960s comic book version (pictured on the right) and an Atomic Age craft. It will still lean heavily on looking like the1966 boat, however.

Since I am removing the deck a cool detail from the 1966 TV boat will be lost, the bilge vents. Here they are up close.

A bilge is a mechanical part that pumps water out of the boat. The vents bring in and exhaust air from the bilge pump.

The original Batboat was designed and built in 1966 by Glastron Boat Co.of Texas and they used stock vents from their own line of boats. Groups were lined up in four rows and four more were individually spaced out. More on the original boat later.

To the right is what an original Glastron vent looks like up close.

These 1960s parts are extremely hard to find and expensive. There are no suitable replacements on the market that I've seen, either.

Discouraged, I figured these eBay vents can be used for something somewhere down the road. Found them unbelievably cheap, anyway.

My new vents are big things that came from a 1978 Glastron Carlson CV-23 Jet boat and measure 18" X 4".

Last night while browsing eBay I found how I may use them. A 1974 Glastron V-179 Starflight stern drive for sale has vents on each side near the stern.

Could I place them at the rear and the other two just under the front of the fin, something like shown in the 1960s comic book version?

It is still too cold outside to take the tarp off my Batboat to see how this works out, however. Ugh!