I've begun work on a site dedicated to the Hunter 30 (both versions) and need as much content and information as anyone can supply. I especially would appreciate the history of the boat ... designer information ... unique qualities ... Would also love photos, stories, tips, etc. on the 30. Please visit www.hunter30.com to see the beginning stages of this site. I will also log my canal trip as I bring my "new" Hunter 30 home next month. I will also add a role call section to try to account for all the Hunter 30s in existence (so if you know of any). You'll find an email link on the page, or you can send anything you've got to: eric@hunter30.com. Thanks so much and fair winds!
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Brett
Site is looking good
Looks like you are off to a great start with the website. I really like the pictures included (especially the one of our boat "The Cure"). The HOW archives should have some great info from John Cherubini II on the history of the H30. He may also weigh in on the subject. Keep up the good work, and if I have any useful info, or pix I'll send them to you.
Looks like you are off to a great start with the website. I really like the pictures included (especially the one of our boat "The Cure"). The HOW archives should have some great info from John Cherubini II on the history of the H30. He may also weigh in on the subject. Keep up the good work, and if I have any useful info, or pix I'll send them to you.
Hunter 30 history.
Eric-- I am intrigued. The site looks pretty good. I'm glad to hear you like the boat so much. My own personal favourites are the original 'bubble-top' 25 (what I call the 'Mk I'), the 27 (just because it is so homely) and the ORIGINAL 54 double-cockpit ketch (which was never built). The 30, however, the original Hunter flagship, and I share a particularly close history, and I'll give some of that to you here in case you'd like to use it. My dad and Bob Seidelmann worked on the original Hunter 25 which initiated the Hunter product line in late 1972. By summer 1973 my dad had set to work on the 30. My mom and my two brothers and I went to Indiana to visit her brother who was dying of cancer and I had swimmer's ear and couldn't swim in the lake and it was a nightmare trip on the bus out and back. The whole time we were gone my dad was working on the 30 on the drawing board by himself whilst cussing us out for taking such a futile trip. But he suffered from 'draftsman's back' and by the time I got home it was so bad he could barely get off the couch. So he assigned me the task of finishing the working drawings of the boat. We set up a second drawing board in the rec. room and with my hair falling into my eyes I got to work, designing the whole interior (as that was a job he never particularly liked doing) and calculating all the displacement and CLR/CE figures. I was 16-1/2. The original layout which I devised had a marginally useable pilot berth to port above a narrow settee that I suppose you could sleep on, a settee on the other side, and a drop-leaf table in the middle-- a first (and maybe only) for Hunter. But I always hated dinettes. The head had a usable shower and there was a quarter berth too, so it had six real berths. I remember the galley was halfway decent-- I was always better at galley design than my dad was, since he hated the whole idea of cooking on a boat. His idea was to go sailing, not camping. When it gets dark, get off the boat and go home, you know. I was showing an H-30 to my girlfriend at the Annapolis show and found Hunter had got rid of the pilot berth. That was about 1979 I guess. But the boat as it debuted in late 1973 was pretty much as I drew it inside. Hunter was never much for innovation and tended to do whatever showed on the plans. Later this would change. That August there was what I used to call a 'corporate bullsh*t session' at Marlboro, Hunter's original R&D and production facility in Monmouth County NJ. Bob Seidelmann had ordered a 25 for himself and being invited to the meeting he drove us up in his big fat Chrysler station wagon with the tilt wheel angled down into his lap. I had to go along because my dad would need the assistance-- he sat in back, wearing a metal-boned girdle to reinforce his back. He'd been in hospital for traction earlier in the week. He was in so much pain that I ended up doing the talking at the meeting, explaining to marketing and finance that the H-30 weighed 10,002 lbs and therefore at $2.00/lb, which is what fibreglass boats (and steak) cost at the start of the OPEC crisis, it would not fairly sell for under 20 grand. They had this price in their heads-- $19,995. I said, 'Well, you could cut five pounds out of it somewhere or just stand to lose ten bucks on the deal, but that's what it weighs.' I had long hair and I doubt any of them took me seriously-- except for John and Warren Luhrs, who'd already gained some respect for my brother Steve and I for having brains. We often appeared inseparable from my dad when those guys showed up at the house to talk business. We showed them our landsailers and skateboards and model airplanes and we all went out for pizza or to Ponderosa Steak House and told stupid jokes to them. My dad always took it with pride. Neither of the Luhrs brothers had sons and so I think they sort of enjoyed our company. 'Talk it over with the boys and let us know what you think,' they'd say as they left. The meeting went to about 8.30 at night (it was dark in August) and then Bob S hooked up his 25 on a trailer to the back of the big fat Chrysler station wagon and we drove home, all the way down Rt 70 (bumpa, bumpa, bumpa....). My dad spent a few more weeks on the couch. By Christmas his back was so bad he could not help bring in the tree. The cancer of the joints that eventually killed him was the same as what recently killed actor Robert Urich. I think my dad had the early stages of it for years and no one knew. The 30 was the only keel-CB model Hunter made. Eventually they dropped that too and went with the standard shoal-or-deep keel configurations, which I'd prefer anyway. I've never heard anyone say they disliked anything about the 30. All the Hunter boats were intended to be well-rounded sailing boats for normal people and their families to enjoy. I think it's testimony to the 'everyman' attitude of the early Hunter staff, and to my dad's knack for drawing a good-performing, good-looking boat that can easily and cheaply be achieved in production, that they became so popular so fast. At one point in Marlboro they were producing one boat a day from each of five lines-- 27, 30, 33, and two of the 25. There were five boats in each line and every day at 10.00 a whistle blew and each line moved one boat out the door and took in another from the mould shop. By the close of the '70s the Luhrs brothers were worth over $24 million in corporate assets, the last people to become multimillionaires from the sailboat-building business till after OPEC. Unfortunately my dad never got paid more than a salary and all the Hunter designs remain, however killed off, Hunter property. If only he'd listened to me when I told him he should contract for $500/boat.... But I had long hair then, you know. JC 2 JComet@aol.com
Eric-- I am intrigued. The site looks pretty good. I'm glad to hear you like the boat so much. My own personal favourites are the original 'bubble-top' 25 (what I call the 'Mk I'), the 27 (just because it is so homely) and the ORIGINAL 54 double-cockpit ketch (which was never built). The 30, however, the original Hunter flagship, and I share a particularly close history, and I'll give some of that to you here in case you'd like to use it. My dad and Bob Seidelmann worked on the original Hunter 25 which initiated the Hunter product line in late 1972. By summer 1973 my dad had set to work on the 30. My mom and my two brothers and I went to Indiana to visit her brother who was dying of cancer and I had swimmer's ear and couldn't swim in the lake and it was a nightmare trip on the bus out and back. The whole time we were gone my dad was working on the 30 on the drawing board by himself whilst cussing us out for taking such a futile trip. But he suffered from 'draftsman's back' and by the time I got home it was so bad he could barely get off the couch. So he assigned me the task of finishing the working drawings of the boat. We set up a second drawing board in the rec. room and with my hair falling into my eyes I got to work, designing the whole interior (as that was a job he never particularly liked doing) and calculating all the displacement and CLR/CE figures. I was 16-1/2. The original layout which I devised had a marginally useable pilot berth to port above a narrow settee that I suppose you could sleep on, a settee on the other side, and a drop-leaf table in the middle-- a first (and maybe only) for Hunter. But I always hated dinettes. The head had a usable shower and there was a quarter berth too, so it had six real berths. I remember the galley was halfway decent-- I was always better at galley design than my dad was, since he hated the whole idea of cooking on a boat. His idea was to go sailing, not camping. When it gets dark, get off the boat and go home, you know. I was showing an H-30 to my girlfriend at the Annapolis show and found Hunter had got rid of the pilot berth. That was about 1979 I guess. But the boat as it debuted in late 1973 was pretty much as I drew it inside. Hunter was never much for innovation and tended to do whatever showed on the plans. Later this would change. That August there was what I used to call a 'corporate bullsh*t session' at Marlboro, Hunter's original R&D and production facility in Monmouth County NJ. Bob Seidelmann had ordered a 25 for himself and being invited to the meeting he drove us up in his big fat Chrysler station wagon with the tilt wheel angled down into his lap. I had to go along because my dad would need the assistance-- he sat in back, wearing a metal-boned girdle to reinforce his back. He'd been in hospital for traction earlier in the week. He was in so much pain that I ended up doing the talking at the meeting, explaining to marketing and finance that the H-30 weighed 10,002 lbs and therefore at $2.00/lb, which is what fibreglass boats (and steak) cost at the start of the OPEC crisis, it would not fairly sell for under 20 grand. They had this price in their heads-- $19,995. I said, 'Well, you could cut five pounds out of it somewhere or just stand to lose ten bucks on the deal, but that's what it weighs.' I had long hair and I doubt any of them took me seriously-- except for John and Warren Luhrs, who'd already gained some respect for my brother Steve and I for having brains. We often appeared inseparable from my dad when those guys showed up at the house to talk business. We showed them our landsailers and skateboards and model airplanes and we all went out for pizza or to Ponderosa Steak House and told stupid jokes to them. My dad always took it with pride. Neither of the Luhrs brothers had sons and so I think they sort of enjoyed our company. 'Talk it over with the boys and let us know what you think,' they'd say as they left. The meeting went to about 8.30 at night (it was dark in August) and then Bob S hooked up his 25 on a trailer to the back of the big fat Chrysler station wagon and we drove home, all the way down Rt 70 (bumpa, bumpa, bumpa....). My dad spent a few more weeks on the couch. By Christmas his back was so bad he could not help bring in the tree. The cancer of the joints that eventually killed him was the same as what recently killed actor Robert Urich. I think my dad had the early stages of it for years and no one knew. The 30 was the only keel-CB model Hunter made. Eventually they dropped that too and went with the standard shoal-or-deep keel configurations, which I'd prefer anyway. I've never heard anyone say they disliked anything about the 30. All the Hunter boats were intended to be well-rounded sailing boats for normal people and their families to enjoy. I think it's testimony to the 'everyman' attitude of the early Hunter staff, and to my dad's knack for drawing a good-performing, good-looking boat that can easily and cheaply be achieved in production, that they became so popular so fast. At one point in Marlboro they were producing one boat a day from each of five lines-- 27, 30, 33, and two of the 25. There were five boats in each line and every day at 10.00 a whistle blew and each line moved one boat out the door and took in another from the mould shop. By the close of the '70s the Luhrs brothers were worth over $24 million in corporate assets, the last people to become multimillionaires from the sailboat-building business till after OPEC. Unfortunately my dad never got paid more than a salary and all the Hunter designs remain, however killed off, Hunter property. If only he'd listened to me when I told him he should contract for $500/boat.... But I had long hair then, you know. JC 2 JComet@aol.com
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Tim McCarty
Great Story JC2!!
I am a very proud owner of an '82 272...I love my boat-it's gotten me through some very "memorable" storms on Lake Erie. I love the design (be nice to have a queen sized berth though). I would love to see more Cherubini-designed boats. What do y'say??? Thanks again for the backround...
I am a very proud owner of an '82 272...I love my boat-it's gotten me through some very "memorable" storms on Lake Erie. I love the design (be nice to have a queen sized berth though). I would love to see more Cherubini-designed boats. What do y'say??? Thanks again for the backround...
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Ed Munson
down in Smithfield
Brett, thanks for the web site. I live in smithfield Va and have a 91 H30T. I have added a fair amount to the boat and have a digital camera. What are you interested in? autopilot, refrigeration, stereo, radio, etc? Let me know.
Brett, thanks for the web site. I live in smithfield Va and have a 91 H30T. I have added a fair amount to the boat and have a digital camera. What are you interested in? autopilot, refrigeration, stereo, radio, etc? Let me know.
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Herb Marizy
Nice Site
Eric, I added your site to my favorites list. It looks really good. I'll check in from time to time to see how it's coming. Let me know if I can supply any pictures for you. I've had my 1979 H30 (Sandpiper)for 4 years now and absolutely love it. - Herb Marizy
Eric, I added your site to my favorites list. It looks really good. I'll check in from time to time to see how it's coming. Let me know if I can supply any pictures for you. I've had my 1979 H30 (Sandpiper)for 4 years now and absolutely love it. - Herb Marizy
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