Hilux 4x4 Forum

In ±1973/4 I bought a Crestrider G3 speed boat brand new for the princely sum of R1100. I still have this boat and was contacted recently by a chap on the 4x4CF who had just bought one as well. These are sound boats, very, very stable as one would expect from those massive pontoons on either side of the hull.

Does anybody here have any info on the factory that produced these boats? I'm pretty sure they were built in East London and the last time I was there - many, many years ago - there were lots of these moored on the beaches.

Andy?
-F_D

Hey Eric, if you ever want to sell that boat, I will give you what you paid for it

Hi, I'm the chap, thanks oom Eric.

This is mine, not in as good a shape as oom FD's, but hopefully one day.

My thinking was that they may have been produced in PE, but have no information to collaborate.

Eric, I myself had a Crestrider G4 cabin boat, the hulls was a little similar but not the same ... deeper as I recall and maybe wider / longer.

But I digress .... I don't think they were built in East London, but rather in Port Elizabeth. I'm not certain about this but that's my thoughts. They were reasonably popular around here and there were also Crestrider canopies for bakkies and I can recall there being an outlet but don't think there was a manufacturing facility, unless it was divorced and separately located from the canopy fitment centre.

I see there was a post while I was typing that also suggests P. E. as the place of manufacture.

Eric's trailer is the original, but Ben's is a re-build or a much later version. My trailer was very similar to Eric's but I had to do some mods to it as it was bit flimsy for the weight of the G4 and also after some time at the coast there were some rails that needed replacing. Just for interest sake .....

Mine looked like this but in yellow trim and had a windshield on top of the cabin .....

.

Thanks Andy, and Hi! to Ben.

May well have been PE then, or maybe they were imported? Mine is still in pretty good nic and it has no plate stating manufacture, serial number etc., other than s silver sticker stating "Crestrider G3".

My trailer is original except for the mudguards, these were originally made from flimsy black fibreglass with one support at the top centre. It now features home-made metal mudguards that I fitted about 15 years ago, one day I will get around to painting them with some colour other than the red-oxide primer ;)

This boat has been to St Lucia in KZN, Kowie River in Port Alfred (story below), Gariep Dam, Vaal Dam numerous times, and then its home ground is Klerksdorp dam and also the Vaal river. the Vaal Dam is enormous, we went out one night and I left a Cadac gas light burning on the jetty from where we launched. We rode to Groot Eiland for a "Ghost Hike" (illegal I believe, and there are actual graves on the island, but hey! - it was fun!) and then headed back to base. Only.... we could not find the Cadac gas lamp, nowhere to be seen. I rode around the shoreline for over 20 minutes before deciding to just land anywhere and spend the night in the open, resume the search in the morning. But as luck had it, as I rounded the edge of the bay, there was our ever-so-friendly light, beaming us in.

The Port Alfred trip did not go well. We arrived there late on Friday night, after each of us suffering very upset tummies due to the chicken we skoffed for lunch, enroute to PA. But Saturday morning arrived and tummy aches were a thing of the past. The rest of the gang went to the park on the Kowie river while I went to launch the boat at the facilities provided. The concrete slipway was coated in algae, but then so was the one at Klerksdorp dam so this was of no consequence.

Wrong!!

Coastal algae is a KILLER, and I fell my gat off, smack bang on to the slipway. Now, three weeks prior to this I had an emergency appendectomy operation, suffering a burst appendix and as I fell, I twisted my body so as not land on my stomach and burst the wound open... This resulted in three broken ribs when I subsequently fell on my elbow. I still launched the boat, it started, and slowly rode over to the rest of the gang across the river. That took care of any further boating, the ribs made themselves very prominent throughout the remainder of our 10-day stay at Port Alfred.

But! This is one boat I will NEVER sell (sorry, Peter), it is the greatest fun on water, very forgiving, and turns on a tickey at full throttle. It has had a series of engines in its lifetime and now has a 85hp Yamaha - perfect fit!


-F_D

EDIT: Geography not my best point, the boat was not at East London (although I have been there) but at the Kowie River in Port Alfred.

Andy, my dream boat at the time was a G4 cabin cruiser, I thought it was the greatest thing oin earth. As said, we camped many times at the Vaal dam and I wanted to fit it out for cruising and living in, but I was sadly too poor to afford one, they used to sell for around R1890 brand new. Where was I to get that amount of cash from??

I had a brochure on the G3, I have been looking for it because, like a true hoarder... er, I mean collector, I never throw anything away.


-F_D

That must have been the slipway up the river near the Batting bridge. I always launched close to the mouth where the local sea scouts had a boathouse, right close to the river mouth and beach. No slipway, no embankment, just fine sea sand with a nice gradual slope. Perfect for me as I lived in very close walking distance from there - still do, in the house we bought after that.

I used to launch and retrieve the boat alone .... just pushed the whole rig in and floated the boat off the trailer, moored the boat and pulled the trailer out. Retrieving was the same procedure in reverse except that it was too heavy to pull out with the boat loaded but just used a rope hitched to the tow-ball and pulled it out using that "U" shaped flat bar stand in front as a skid. The vehicle never even got wet. High tide was a little trickier as the width of the "beach" area along the river mouth became a lot narrower.

Used to have a lot of fun with he family, countless hours of fishing, skiing up and down the river or just simply cruising the river. Often spent nights on the river as well ... launched, took the vehicle and trailer home and walked back to the river.

Good days.

And this morning when I was more awake than last night when I wrote the article two posts up, I realise that I have never had the boat at East London. I was there and we did camp along the Nahoon river somewhere, but without the boat.

The references to EL and Nahoon river above actually refer to Port Alfred and the Kowie river.

Excuse me, I'm a landlubber... one coastal town looked pretty much the same as any other coastal town at the time for me


-F_D

Pity about the incident at the Kowie, it's a great river for boating ... I believe it has the longest traversable section of rivers in SA, and it's very scenic. You would have had a great time there.