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It’s not everyday
you see one of these cruise through the harbor—or docked at the local
marina. That’s because Cosmic Muffin, the “boat”
you see in the photo on the left, is a true one of a kind: At one time,
she was a 1939 Boeing 307 Stratoliner airplane complete with wings, tail,
and cockpit, and she actually flew. (The 307 was the first commercial
pressurized aircraft and a variant of the B-17 Flying Fortress. Only ten
307s were built, all in the late-1930’s. Production was stopped at
the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939.) For more than 20 years,
Cosmic Muffin was a houseboat for her proud liveaboard owner, David
Drimmer. Today she rests dockside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, open to
the public for touring or chartering. But the story of how she came to
be what she is today is even weirder than her looks.
It all began when industrialist
and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes acquired the plane in 1939 as part
of his purchase of Trans World Airlines (TWA). Ten years later Texas oil
baron Glenn McCarthy, who’s life was immortalized by James Dean in
the movie Giant, purchased the plane, which he dubbed The Shamrock.
In 1962 the plane arrived in Fort Lauderdale, and Florida Jet Research
bought it. Then in 1964 the plane suffered extensive damage from Hurricane
Cleo, ending its flying days. Drimmer says its then-owner, aircraft broker
Joseph MacCaughtry, who bought the plane sometime around 1963 or 1964,
took a $40,000 loan out to fix it, then defaulted, after which the bank
removed everything of value—engines included. “From then until
1969 it was left derelict, abandoned, open, and unlocked...people would
come aboard and lounge around,” Drimmer reports.
Later that year the
airplane was declared abandoned property and put up for auction. Ken London,
a private pilot, came in with the winning bid: a whopping $62. Drimmer
says, “He [London] thought, ‘What can we do besides cutting
it all up?’ That’s when he came up with the wacky idea of making
it into a motoryacht.” And so, after some extensive work that included
removing the wings and tail with an acetylene torch, London took the remaining
fuselage to a nearby boatyard. In 1974 he launched the former 307 as a
seaworthy vessel dubbed The Londonaire.
Herb Werner purchased
the vessel in 1977 for $60,000, under an agreement whereby, according
to Drimmer, Werner would make payments and give London a Ford Thunderbird.
Only London never got either—luckily for him, he never signed over
the title. Allegedly, the boat was in a yard for a refit when Werner suffered
a massive heart attack and died on the operating table. His estate abandoned
the vessel, and the yard doing the refit work took possession of it. When
no one would pay the $12,000 yard bill, it was again put up for auction.
In 1981, after receiving
no bids, the yard put an ad in the local classifieds, promoting the plane-boat
as a “unique 56-foot houseboat. A true ‘bachelor pad.’
For sale for $8,500.” Drimmer, who at the time was renting an apartment
in the area, was looking for a new place and came across the ad. He says,
“I was looking for something livable and affordable, and this sounded
good. When I saw it, I said, ‘Holy crap! It’s a floating plane!’”
Drimmer, who had no marine background, decided he just “had to have
it,” and $7,500 later, it was all his.
“Everybody thought
I was crazy when I said I wanted to buy it,” Drimmer, who earns a
modest salary working in the printing industry, told me during a phone
interview. “A friend of mine with an extensive nautical background
who was helping me shop for a liveaboard boat begged me not to buy it,
my Mom begged me not to buy it, my lawyer begged me not to buy it, but
I just had to have it...I found the tubular look and shape terribly intriguing
and fascinating; it was a very welcoming, open kind of warmth, and I could
see beyond the mess and enjoy the novelty of what it really was.”
After a pause and a chuckle, he adds, “It’s funny. Rich people
that do something like that get called ‘eccentric’; poor people
are ‘crazy.’”
Next page >
Part
2: “I’ve finally learned the secret of boat
repairs: Do your estimate, crunch your numbers, and whatever figure you
come up with, double it.” > Page 1, 2,
3, 4
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