"Bella Barca" beautiful Boat in Italian 35' Swedish pleasure boat concept

by Paul Katynski
(Las Vegas NV)

This is a team effort. I followed Petters 1:24 scale PT boat plans until the necessary modifications to convert it to the boat you see. All that I had was a picture and I scaled it from there. The 1:24 PT boat is now a 1:10 scale. It was my mistake building the hull too heavy and all of the PT boat accessories, i.e. torpedoes, depth charges, gen turrets etc. added to the weight of the hull, still without fiberglass and finish, was over 6 pounds. It was pointless to move forward with that boat. I searched the internet up and down for a boat with the comparable hull and found the 35' Rita concept as seen in the first picture. I attempted to contact the gentleman for permission to build a model but received no reply.
The boat took me about 3 months to build and I really didn't draw any plans; just took some measurements and scaled them up. It was a very slow and tedious build, however it was well worth the effort. The cost was substantial but I have many parts left over from the PT and this boat. In the picture you'll see that the bow has an external gunwale and the stern is an internal like the barrel-back speedboats. I didn't want to screw up another project so I just built up the gunwale of the bow, eliminated the chine, angled the stern for the decking and went to town. The boat with the running gear is just a little over 4.5 pounds. I have a 540 brushed in it currently but it is going to be too much for the motor. I am converting it over to brushless in a few weeks before the first run. The top lifts out of the interior, rear railing pops out as well as the top deck. This exposes the watertight box down the center of the boat. Everything is real handy with plenty of room. The on/off switch is outside of the box as well as the radio antenna. I can't wait to run it. With the brushless set up as well as an Octura x432 prop its estimated at 86% efficient, around 22 m.p.h with approximately 7 1/2 to 9 minutes run-time. If you need any questions answered feel free to contact me and I would be pleased to help, Paul

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