Make a donation today! Help support your favorite classic fiberglass boating informational site today by making a donation in any amount. Simply paypal swood@fiberglassics.com For new visitors, a little about us: First off, welcome to your new home. Click the little folders below for a more information on us. Click a folder below to open, or.... Open All | Close All First off, welcome to you: Welcome! I'm Kelly Wood, I created FiberGlassics. I hope you enjoy your time here. FiberGlassics is an enthusiasts website dedicated to the preservation & use of classic fiberglass boats... period. This website has evolved 5 times since its beginning in 1998. For more information on the history, see our scrapbook located in the Galleries section. The purpose of this website is to provide a free resource to anyone looking for information on older fiberglass boats. All information on this site is free. You pay nothing to view the information contained within this site. You fill out no forms, join nothing, nada. It is not a website that sells boats. If you find that there isn't information on this site about your boat and you just happen to have something to contribute, try emailing us and donate the information to the site for all to see. Started in 1998 by Kelly Wood, this site was the first of its kind. It now stands alone as the single largest web site of its type in existence. The idea here is to collect and compile an easy to use, online resource containing information on all fiber glass boats built before 1970 (and some after), thus becoming a powerful informational resource on the internet. Remember? That WAS the original intent of the world wide web when it made its debut in 1994. Information... Our collection of FREE information grows every day. Here you will meet many kind and generous people. They are willing to share just about anything. Our purpose here is to find information, make it available on the site, and keep it FREE...forever. Yeah, I know what some people think, Why should I support this site and give any money towards this??? I can get it free here Well, yes... it is free here... You do not have to do anything. Unfortunately, that IS what some people do... they find what they were looking for, use the resource, then they leave... Never ONCE thinking about the bigger picture behind the making of this and what it takes to keep it running...much less... build it. So, YOU DECIDE, is it worth supporting? This website is run by ONE person. It is not a site about Kelly, a personal page about Kelly, a site about how cool he thinks he is, nor is it some arrogant, self serving, dorkey puke page of links or about his ability to plaster pictures of his pets all over the internet. It is a site about boats. Many times this site will help you in your search, sometimes it will not. If it does not help you, do not complain about it, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Become a supporter! This site only exists because of the supporters... We do not make a killing here unless you are refering to knowledge. Many times the supporters have simply stated that the information they had uncovered here is worth well over the small amount they donated. We are not out to get your money, it is just something we request to help support the continuance of the site, spirit, and general idea. Now, take a trip with us into the past... in the exploration of something that will never again be...quite the same. On behalf of the supporters of FiberGlassics and myself, Kelly Wood... Welcome to FiberGlassics! Disclaimer: Fiberglassics provides the information contained on this Web site as a courtesy and service to anyone interested. We offer a wide range of information, including links to other organizations’ and personal interest sites, to meet as many needs as possible. Fiberglassics makes every effort to provide accurate data according to the resources and users available to us. However, neither the contributors, Fiberglassics, or any other association involved in the preparation of the material and data available on or through this site, warrant or represent that the information provided here is complete and accurate, and are not responsible for errors, omissions, or changes in data. Back to top & close The Beginnings: FiberGlassics is the sole work of Kelly Wood and has been written entirely on the fly using only 4 simple tools: Microsoft Notepad, a basic FTP program and a simple graphics editing software... and an idea. FiberGlassics made its first appearance on the world wide web in June of 1998 after I'd run into nothing but dead end after dead end in my search for information on my boat. The internet, which was young at the time, seemed to be void of information on classic fiberglass boats. Don't get me wrong, there were sites out there for the fiberglass enthusiast but there sure weren't many. (I think there were two) When you did find something on your boat, you'd be disappointed to find out that most of them wanted money for that information. Believe it or not, I too paid some rediculous amount of money for a crappy 3 page black and white copy--of a copy--for a library on my boat. I got pretty upset when I got the library copies in the mail. It wasn't pretty. Nevertheless, I still got something... and that's when it hit me. Before going further, we'll back up a little. About 1994 was when I got my first boat. I got it because my older brother had one and my grandfather had shown me all about his when I was young. I liked boats but the newer ones just didn't cut it. I had to have something that needed help. I was one of those guys that would take stuff apart just to see what made it work. While driving around looking for a used car, I found it. That old boat sitting in a field... and it looked lonely. My first boat was a 1965 Glasspar Super G. I bought it out of a field for 500 bucks after tracking down the owner. It took a couple of days but I was determined to have it. I got it home and started cleaning it up. I knew that it was a Glasspar and that the dash said "Super G", but I didnt' know much more. It was red, needed help, and didn't run. Being the auto mechanic I am, I eventually got it fired up using a coil from a VW Bus that was rusting away in the field next to my apartments and was ready to go. My first trip in "MY" boat was a great. My dad helped me out by towing it up to a local lake. The first time out I was in heaven. A few years went by and I'd used the boat every summer until I blew up the old Evinrude 90HP motor. I was devastated. After looking around at new motors I found something in an advertisement in a local paper. When I called about it, the guy told me that it was a 1963 Mercury 850. I met the guy and traded him the beat up Evinrude and 370.00 for the merc. I put it on and I was back to boating. Another year had gone by and I'd used the boat almost every weekend. I'd learned everything I could about the motor and kept it in top shape as best I could. Right about early 1997, I was working a computer tech position and doing part time web stuff for my brother when I started getting curious about the boat. "Was there anyone else out there with one like mine?" I decided to try my hand at making a web site and set up a tiny site that I called Salvage One. The idea was to see if anyone out there had a Super G. It was named after an 80's TV show starring Andy Griffith and some friends that had a plan to go to the moon in a spaceship made from scrap found in their junkyard. I'd been building things from scrap stuff for some time and thought it appropriate. Hell, I built my boat from scraps of other boats. The site was sort of about my boat and a boat salvage site. I made money salvaging garbage boats for their parts & trailers. I made a little money in the summer of 1997 running my own "wish-I-was-a-business" while I ran the site. Somewhere about that summer/fall, I then ran into Karl Beisel. He ran the Glasspar G3 Owners Association web site and was most helpful with yet more information on the Super G. You see, the Super G was Glasspar's attempt at a better G-3... which it never became. In late 1997, I ran into a guy named Henry Menke. He owned a 1965 Glasspar Marathon and had his own site about it. Over time, we'd become something like email buddies. I linked his site to mine and we had our first link to something other than a Super G. Emails came in and soon we had two sites about some old boats, 2 glasspars. In January 1998, the site experienced a little traffic and I had quite a few people emailing me... but they weren't inquiring about Glasspars. They were asking about other boats I'd never seen much less heard of. By this time I knew what a glasspar Super G was, where it was made, and had pictures of some people that owned them on the site... but I couldn't answer their questions. This brings me to where "IT HIT ME" There wasn't an informational site on the world wide web for all classic fiberglass boats. There were others for wood boats, but they didn't seem to have any information or the time to even answer questions about them. This set the stage for what happened next. Early one morning in my office I was searching the internet for boating sites and decided I'd look around for domain names. I tried all kinds of names to see what was available because I was about to set up a site, a grand site that I knew would never EVER be finished. I was going to put Glasspar behind the scenes and list it as a manufactured boat in the 50's & 60's. The site would have others too. After looking through the available names I'd tried, I got on a call with a customer. It was the typical support call and in the process of helping them, I stumbled on it. FIBERGLASSICS. It had a really cool ring to it, it described the whole thing! I quickly registered it and built a front page to it. The page was simple. It had a mission statement, a manufacturer list and some other things on it for color. It ran for a few months and the emails slowly came in. People had librarys out there! People had information! Most of all, people had pictures of boats that were out of this world! They had headlights, fins & tail lights? COOL! People emailed librarys in and I put them on the site. It started growing! Henry mentioned that a message board might be a good idea. I had no idea how to do it but with the help of my brother, we put one up and away we went. Keep in mind that I never once thought that what we were doing would create not only a new hobby, but a whole new word. "Glassic" Things moved along nicely for a while and it started becoming evident that what I'd started was taking time... lots of time to do. The size of the site was increasing and with that, the price of hosting went up. Henry mentioned in an email that maybe a membership was needed to help offset costs. I thought "what the hell," and I created a membership for a mere 35.00 (which it still is) to see if anyone would willingly support this effort of maintaining a free resource site. There weren't many initial supporters but there were some. Many of them are still active on the message boards to this day. For the record, Jeff Bowman was the very first FiberGlassics Member. Since 1998, FiberGlassics has had many supporting members. Some of them even went off to create their own sites. Classicglasspars.com (run by one of FiberGlassics first members, Michael McKinney) and Classicglastron.com (Todd Kimball - FiberGlassics Member 7, I believe) are among a few. So there it is. Many years and thousands of hours of work... It's still free, and it's still #1. I'm Kelly Wood, Look what I did. Thank you Henry Menke for your support and thank you Jeff Bowman, and everyone that's helped me along the way. Especially my wife Sandi... I will not forget you, I promise. Kelly Wood President - Founder - Webmaster FiberGlassics.com Back to top & close The Webmasters: A little about your web hosts... Kelly Wood - President, Founder, Webmaster & Site Conception. Other accomplishments: Husband, father, photographer, artist, graphic designer & web designer (50 websites under my belt). Sandi Wood - Administrator for Glassifieds & Public Relations Administrator. Other accomplishments: Wife, mother, super-wife. Back to top & close The Legal Stuff: To our knowledge, the term "fiberglassics" was first used by us in reference to classic fiberglass boats in July 1998 when we first appeared on the internet. The term "glassic" or "glassics" also appeared here as well in reference to classic fiberglass boats. While we're sure we didn't coin the phrase, we did make it a well known term in the classic boating world. The Service Mark (sm) was awarded to Kelly Wood on December 7, 2004. A copy is below. Anyone using the name "fiberglassics" on any written communication, claiming ownership of said name, without express written permission from Kelly Wood, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This is my baby, don't ruin it for me. Our Trademark & Business License below: Back to top & close Home  |  New Visitors  |  FAQ  |  Galleries  |  The Library  |  Links  |  Contact  |  News  |  Marketplace