ski-boat, noun

/ˈskiːbəʊt/
Origin:
See quotation 1953.
Originally, a broad, flat-bottomed boat designed for offshore angling, with two water-tight holds and two outboard motors; loosely, any boat designed to take an outboard motor and be used at sea. Also attributive.
c1953 C. Birkby In Sun I’m Rich 38A fleet of close on a hundred tiny craft..surging along on the swells. Those were the ski-boats. An odd name, but then the ski-boat is an odd craft...Durban dreamed up the ski-boat.
c1953 C. Birkby In Sun I’m Rich 39Hayden Grey snapped his fingers one day in 1942. Why not, he thought, build bigger and stouter versions of the surf-skis? And..why not power them with outboard motors? Soon he had planned, designed and built the first ‘ski-boat’...The ski-boat craze grew, unnoticed, in Natal. By the middle of 1951 there were a hundred of them.
1964 A. Trew Smoke Island 43José brought the skiboat round and Andy recovered some of the lost line as he scrambled into the fighting-chair.
1971 Daily News 26 Feb. 8The best reports of Natal ’cuda..were excellent catches at the Aliwal Shoal by skiboats.
1979 E. Prov. Herald 15 Nov. 23One of them, whose skiboat we were fishing from, put down a chokka dolley.
1991 Leisure Bks Catal. Apr.–June 14Read all about..ski boat angling.
1993 Argus 12 Aug. 16Anglers ranging from the casual weekend skiboat fraternity to professional snoek fishermen on commercial snoek boats.
1993 [see geelbek sense 1 a].
Originally, a broad, flat-bottomed boat designed for offshore angling, with two water-tight holds and two outboard motors; loosely, any boat designed to take an outboard motor and be used at sea. Also attributive.
Derivatives:
Hence skiboater  noun, one who uses a skiboat for fishing.
c1953 C. Birkby In Sun I’m Rich 39The ski-boaters usually fished in old khaki shorts or in bathing trunks.
1992 Yeld & Gubb in Afr. Wildlife Vol.46 No.2, 203There is a..lack of..evidence on..the effect of ski-boaters, of which about 250 have commercial licences, as well as thousands of rock and surf anglers.
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19531993

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skiboater

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