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Drift'n with Pip
Introduction
I'm Jerry Tuott, and I live twenty miles north of
Minneapolis, in the frozen state of Minnesota.
The very first time I saw a Vector at Luther's Marine, where I was
employed rigging boats, I got an incredible adrenalin rush. That was
27 years ago when I was fresh out of Anoka Tech Small Engines School.
I have had a hankering for one of these wild-looking rascals ever since.
I test piloted one of these new Vector's with my supervisor in Centerville
Lake one day with a 115 Merc that we had just rigged. We launched
the boat and Mark Levasser gave me permission to take the wheel. My
high performance blood took over my brain with the "hammer down"
instinct. I was trippin' on the "chine walking" we were
experiencing as the nose went higher and higher and higher until Mark
reached over and chopped the throttle and said, "Out of that seat.
This motor isn't even broke in!" I was hooked on a feelin'.
Well, this brings me to 26 years later, to the Spring of 2003, with
$2000 in my pocket and my eyes set on a Vector. My son, Ron, found
for me a '73 Viper with a '90 Mariner. Three days later Ron and I
pulled that sweet little thing home with my Ranger pickup. Seeing it
in the rear view mirror --- what a high that was!
I had gotten to know this guy about 4 years before getting my Viper.
He and I worked on cars together in my garage (which should explain my
high performance bent). During a conversation one day, the subject
changed to boats, and I mentioned that I had this burning passion to some
day own a high performance boat - a Hydrostream Vector in
particular. This guy tells me that he used to build these boats and
I ask him, do you mean repair them? He said, "No, I designed and
built them." I think to my self, Pipkorn/Hydostream? I
know the man that built my dream machine, and here he was standing here in
my garage. Scrape me off the floor! This may sound extreme, but that
is my temperament. When I get excited, I get excited.
After making a dozen or so, "white knuckle" runs, we would shut
the engine down and Pip would lecture me on the engineering aspects of the
interaction of air and water effects on a flying vessel. I soaked up
like a sponge what seemed like a lifetime of hands-on experience and
development, all the time drifting as a gentle breeze carried us into a
patch of bull rushes.
This leads me to the Hydrostream Registry. Last summer I was looking
for information about Hydrostreams on the internet and stumbled onto the Registry.
I tried to register my Viper and as I was pretty new to the internet. I
must have done something wrong and it never went through. I tried
again in February, noticing that the Registry had been updated and not
receiving new registrants. So, I tried through the Tech Talk avenue
to contact someone to try and register or find out why I couldn't.
Mark Casper, himself, answered me with an email, saying that he
would personally register me. At that time I told Mark that I
regularly spoke with Howard, and that I wondered if he wanted to hook up
for some Hydrostream history. Of course, Mark went wild at the
thought, and over the course of three weeks I finally got them hooked up.
I offered to do interviews with PIPKORN for the Registry and call them,
"Drift'n with Pip...". Howard and I have had a
few of these in my Viper and him in his Virage on a local Minnesota lake.
Since Howard and Mark have both consented, here I am.
Streamin' high,
Jerry Tuott
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