Watching a 27-plus-foot
pontoon rise up on its
sponsons and rocket
down the lake at 60-
plus mph is, well, sur-
real. It’s like watching a
Boeing 777 lift o. Your
fi rst thought is, “How
does it fl y?” In the case
of the pontoon (and the
777, for that matter), it’s
a matter of meticulous
engineering, testing and
plain-old brute power.
A big ’toon is long, wide
and heavy, and blows
through the air and over
the water like a brick —
so it needs big engines,
and years of setup savvy,
to get it fl ying.
Much of the ini-
tial groundwork acco-
lades for fast pontoons
must certainly go to
one man: Jim Dorris,
founder and owner of
PlayCraft Boats. Dorris
has built, set up, won
races and set records in
just about every kind of
vessel imaginable. He
started Charger Bass
Boats in 1974, and it fol-
lowed, later in his life,
that he began to applyhis high-performance
boatbuilding knowl-
edge and experience to
the pontoon boats he
built and sold out of his
Missouri factory. This
was a personal thing for
Dorris; as he got older,
he sought the comfortand relaxation of
pontooning but didn’t
want to give up running
fast with the “big boys.”
At the now-famous
LOTO Shootout back
in 1995, Dorris showed
up with what he called
a Hydro-Toon powered
by a small-block 350
Chevy and MerCruisersterndrive. That was
the beginning. Though
the 46 mph recorded
top speed he attained
was unheard of then,
it’s positively staid now.
Power, design and, of
course, speeds acceler-
ated on a steep curve;
by 2001, Dorris’ crew
logged 81 mph speedsMETAL THUNDER
SMALL-
BLOCK 350
CHEVYJim Dorris of
Playcraft started
the fast ’toon
revolution in
1995 when he
paired a 350
Chevy engine
with a MerCruiser
sterndrive, in-
stalled it on a
Hydro-Toon and
hit a top speed
of 46 mph. Since
then, pontoons
have gotten even
faster, capable
of hitting speeds
over 100 mph.82 | BOATINGMAG.COM | JULY/AUGUST 2018