A runabout is any small motorboat holding between four and eight people, well suited to moving about on the water. Characteristically between 20' to 35' in length, runabouts are used for pleasure activities like boating, fishing, and water skiing, as a ship's tender for larger vessels, or in racing. Some common runabout types are bow rider, center console, cuddy boat and walkaround. The world's largest runabout, Pardon Me, is 48 feet long and owned by the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York. History The first runabouts date back to the 1920s and were originally small, fast, powerful, varnished, wooden boats created to take advantage of the power of outboard motors such as the first Evinrude, introduced in 1909. In order to gain speed, the hull shape had to be designed to take advantage of hydroplaning; a hydrofoil-like design would allow the boat to skim atop the water's surface at high speed instead of needing to push aside large quantities of water to move forward. Another design change which followed soon after was the replacement of the tiller and rudder control with a rudder controlled by a steering wheel, allowing the operator a comfortable forward-facing position. A remote lever to allow the engines to be placed into a reverse gear was another early innovation. Among the leading builders of 1920s runabouts was John L. Hacker, who founded the Hacker Boat Company in 1908. Hacker was a pioneering naval architect who developed many design innovations, like the 'V-bottom'. His designs became the model upon which virtually all subsequent runabouts were based. Shortly, similar upscale varnished-wood runabouts by Gar Wood and Chris-Craft and were also available, fitted with windshields to protect the cockpits and up to Liberty V-12 marinized surplus World War I aero engines built for speed. But by the late 1940s, Gar Wood had stopped producing boats, and by the 1960s Chris-Craft was moving to the more modern materials of plastic and fiberglass. Hackercraft, with multiple changes in ownership, continued on. The mahogany runabouts built by Italian builder Carlo Riva in the late 1950s and the 1960s are considered by many to be premier European examples of the type. The most famous Riva of all time was the Carlo Riva design called the Aquarama Special. Construction and materials Originally, runabouts were made entirely of wood, with mahogany used for hulls and planking and oak for framing. The use of aluminium