Dereck never actually made the spirits
It was his friend jeff harper who made the boats for dc racing.
I met dereck and jeff when they were in the process of building the very first of the spirit boats.
It was then that i ordered a spirit of the south.
I met them a few weeks later when they came up near to where i live and i got my pride and joy
A nice big fully enclosed cockpit version of the Spirit of the south,it got called mk2 as the cockpit was
different to the first ones with pilots in them like the makara etc.
It was at this time that jeff was talking about making the big cat call spirit of the solent, and i got show a few pics of
what he inted to do.
Straight away i told him what the hull was that he was going to use for the centre hull of the solent, he chuckled as
he knew that i knew he was using a hull of someone elses design for the centre part of his new cat.
if i remember correctly its the fletcher arrowbolt hull, ?or could of been the fletcher arrowshaft?.
If i had known he was going to build a big cat before i ordered the spirit of the south, i would of waited and had one of
those instead.
At the time i was after something realy big and impressive, and something that could take a large petrol engine with
enclosed cockpit for sea use.
Being as you have the last remaining one, you should get it moulded up and copied, not fair to be the only one in
existance incase you sink it ha ha
pheonix models bought the rights to the big cat and the moulds from jeff and dereck, thats how they came to make one.
the one in their advert for the solent was infact one of jeffs very first boats in white with blue pinstripes.
It was the boat used for jeff and derecks promotions of the big cat, first time it was showed off i believe was at beale park.
phill