thank you nitro.
your '72 ND must be a beauty. all of shirley mcdonald's notre dame boats were beautiful especially the light blue and white '62 - '68 boats. too bad she changed to the then popular racing stripe theme in '69. she should have retained the light blue for the stripes. at least she brought back the old english gold script lettering for the ND name in '72.
shirley mcdonald was an amazing owner. six unlimiteds totally financed without any outside funding and corporate advertising other than a few small decals on the cockpit.
her boats were the the last of the clean boats with no corporate name or clutter. granted, she was probably the richest woman in the u.s. at the time having inherited a vast fortune from her father's holdings in the fisher body division of general motors. too bad she couldn't put a winning crew and driver together. by 1969, she had best hull and equipment. lief borgensen should have won races. she had more money for her boats than bernie little but he had better team organization and the budweiser promotion department. but she should have won many more races.
the lengthy Fred Farley article and the 3 part ND article in UNJ are very interesting, in my opinion.
regarding the SHU, the question is, what did the planked mahogany deck actually look like in '65 ? the distinctive caulk lines seen on the '67 BUD are not visible in the Crimmin photos of the SHU taken in '65.
dave
