Hi everyone. This Atlas group page has now become the main communication source for the crews, volunteers and fans of both the 1982 Atlas Van Lines and the 1977 Blue Blaster Atlas. Over the past few years, the crews of the two boats have morphed into one Atlas super-crew. So check here often for reports about what’s up with both boats. 

We’re close to confirming that the Blue Blaster will run along with the Pay n’Pak and hopefully the ’80 Budweiser at Seattle’s Seafair early August. We’ve been slowly making several updates to the Blaster over that past winter. We did some re-clear coating and buffing a small section of the deck on the right side and re-welded a small crack in the right “A”frame.

We also built a new skid fin which will hopefully help the boat turn a bit better. The new fin is a couple of inches deeper and canted forward a bit. Chip has noticed the left sponson lifting and letting go at times and suggested adding more angle to the fin. We’ll never get the Blaster to corner quite as well as the ’82 Atlas but hopefully closer. The ’82 Atlas has a more modern fin and mounting system. It also has newer generation sponsons which include inside non-trips and anhedral/dihedral primary riding surfaces.

A huge thanks to Dan Heye for rebuilding the Blaster’s blower and re-timing the valves. We had some issues with the blower leaking when we last ran the boat at the 2016 Spring Training in Tri-Cities. Dan replaced the seals and fitted everything together correctly. We’ll be ready to mount the engine in the boat early June.

It’s been great having original Atlas crew member Tim Ramsey working at the museum on the Squire project. He’s filled in several gaps we didn’t know about the Blaster’s history.

One mystery he solved was explaining why the boat ended up with the mis-fitting cowl in 1980. He says the original, with the external air-scoops, came off the boat in Miami and was damaged. So the team grabbed a cowl off one of the Atlas Van Lines display boats. They didn’t have time to re-paint it so just left it for the rest of the ’80 circuit. The stripes on the new cowl didn’t line up with the cockpit and it didn’t have the dark-blue and while stripes along the top. And instead of the familiar air scoops on each side, the crew experimented with NACA internal scoops, which worked well. So any photo of the Blaster in 1980-81, you’ll see the inset NACA scoops on the cowl.  For the 1981 season, the crew repainted the entire cowling adding the raised headrest on the right side. 

-Don Mock