This unique ship is a late 1930s Boeing 307 Stratoliner

This unique vessel is a late ’30′s Boeing 307 Stratoliner joined to a planing boat hull. Once owned by Howard Hughes as one of the first executive planes, the Stratoliner was damaged in a 1964 hurricane ending it’s flying days. A new owner trucked the plane body to Fort Lauderdale where he launched the Plane Boat in 1974. The fully restored and functional boat planed at over 20 knots and was controlled from the main cockpit using the original flight controls.

In 1981, Fort Lauderdale resident Dave Drimmer saw a classified ad for a 56-foot (17-meter) boathouse asking for $8,500. He’d already lived on a houseboat, a rental, and wanted to buy his own, but he still thought something was wrong with the listing: it looked as if it was missing a zero. When he went to check out the yacht, he found that it was actually a plane and that it floated. Against all advice, he bought it at a discount, for $7,500.

Under Drimmer’s ownership, Londoaire became the Cosmic Muffin, but only because singer Jimmy Buffett saw it, liked it, and included it in his book Where Is Joe Merchant?. As Drimmer explains in one of the older interviews available below, he felt obligated to adopt the name because it had made his boathouse famous.

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