The Glass Slipper

Cinderella tried on the glass slipper this week, and it fit perfectly!

In this story, I am Cinderella. The glass slipper is actually a boat named Dorothy at Retro Boat Rentals in Saugatuck, Michigan, which is one of our favorite summer getaway destinations. 

Retro Boat Rentals has a variety of boats; pontoons, Duffy boats, donut boats, and several small jet age 1950s-60s fiberglass boats. Anyone who knows me and my love of anything Midcentury Modern with fins need not ask what style of boat Dorothy is.

Dorothy is a 15' Glass Slipper, a rare boat made by Marlin Marine of Hillsdale, Michigan in 1958 and '59. It was designed to look like a Ford Thunderbird from the '50s with fins, headlights, fake jet air intakes, fake jet exhausts, bucket seats, T-Bird style dash, and other automotive styling cues. The employee at Retro Boats told us only about 11 were ever made. An article I found online said around 14 were manufactured in 1958, and only 5 in '59. Dorothy is one of the rare '59s. 

According to the article, the headlights on the '58s caused a bit of controversy; a Coast Guard official was said to have told the designer "we don't want to see those things out on the water". To which the designer basically responded "hold my beer", and came back in '59 with dual headlights on each side.  

Retro Boats has kept the original outboard motors and dashboards on their boats, but converted them to electric, which makes for easy operation and a quiet ride. The Kalamazoo River is a no-wake zone, so they are meant to top out at about 4 mph. They even installed a stop on the throttle so you can't really open 'er up even if you wanted to. With the throttle open as far as it would go, we achieved a maximum speed of 4.7 mph. And when we hit a patch of weeds and got briefly entangled, that dropped to about 1 mph! 

I felt right at home in Dorothy, like I had, well, put on the glass slipper and it fit perfectly. What I wouldn't give for my own Dorothy to putt up and down the Grand River in!