I once owned the original SIZZLER from the movie JAWS 2.
I purchased it from Steve Curren yacht sales in Marina Del Rey California in 1990. I lived in El Segundo at the time. I was a novice sailor at the time and my father thought this would be a good goal for me.
The cat was in a yard behind the main office and I could see it from our slip where my dad and I would sail from. We had to get a jib made for the cat because it was missing from the sail bag. There was two main sails. One was white with a mural of a shark on it and one two tone red. I was able to confirm the boat was the actual boat from the movie by examining the film in a particular scene where my SIZZLER cut through one of the upside down Tornadoes. My boat had the scratches in the paint and a dent to match the damage seen in the movie. In 1995 I moved to Salem Oregon and stored to boat at my mothers property. I moved back to L.A. in 1996 and a few years later my mom lost the property to foreclosure. I never saw the boat again. Too bad because my father and I did a lot of work to it and it was a joy to sail. I deeply regret not getting my SIZZLER back from Oregon. Where could it be now?
I used to live near Steve Curren yacht sails and remember that boat sitting in the parking lot! Very unusual to say the least. Was it made of aluminum? I also remember a very unusual paint job, flames all down the hull, correct?
did some checking on the www. the first link was to this site. good article here.
https://thebeachcats.com/news/1377423/the-sizzler-catamaran-aluminum-beachcat/
Here is the footage
My father had one as a teen in the early 70's. Boat I learned to sail on. It was like something out of the future
back in those days.
When I was a teen MN3. My father was in his 30's. It was actually a cool boat. Had a SS keel and us kids hauled it up and down the seawall. Fairly light Aluminum with foam core. I remember feeling real cool one summer as it was the only cat on the lake thus fastest sailboat. Really, know one ever seen one before.
I remember feeling real cool one summer
I always thought you were "real cool"
Miss ya Screaming Jim!!!
On the off chance that @Beast still checks back here on their three-year-old post, I'd love to find out more about how you came to own and lose track of that Sizzler...
I fixed the link to the Sizzler and Super Sizzler article earlier in this topic. Really good firsthand information from Mary Wells, RIP.
Yeah, the very first catamaran that I purchased was a Super Sizzler back in 1980. $500 with a Trailex trailer.
It was painted a light blue with rolled-on house paint. Tramp was blue vinyl but in good condition. Sails were ok for recreational sailing.... it had the roller furling jib that Mary mentioned.... it worked well enough for rigging that looked kinda agricultural.
It was very heavy. Very water-logged. The first time my dad and I took it out for a sail, I was kinda disappointed in it's performance, comparing it to the H14's and H16's that I had sailed as crew. The wake it produced looked like that of a much larger, heavier boat, the transverse waves being quite a bit larger in amplitude than any other cat. My dad thought it was fine.... or so he said. I was a mere 16 yrs old, had just got my driver's license, and absolutely, positively, needed a catamaran of my own! So this Sizzler was the least expensive option that I could find, and more or less ready to sail to boot!
One thing that the Sizzler would never do was pitchpole. That bow foil saved me many, many times. The foil would make a lot of spray and commotion as it plunged under water, but it would pop the lee bow right back up.
A few times I took my two younger sisters sailing on Lake LaDue, and they loved belly-surfing while holding onto the bow foil. I think we rigged up a thick line as a loop from the foil so that most of the drag from their surfing bodies was taken by their foot in the loop. Crazy kids.
Yeah, the sharp keel would dig right in to the clayey-sand of the launching area at Ladue. I would merely sail right into the shore and she'd stick like glue. No worries about her taking off on her own on a windy day. She was certainly a fat cat. She wasn't particularly fast when compared to it's contemporaries, but she was all mine.
Funny, nowadays I see vids of 14,15, and 16 yr olds sailing Vipers, C2's, Akurra's and Nacra 17's. Dang!
During that first year's Autumn, I decided that i was going to fix that tub of a fat-cat....I disassembled the hulls from the tramp frame, stripped all the nasty paint off both hulls, drilled a bunch of drain holes along the bottom U-channel strip so that the excess water could drain. Then I primed the hulls with Zinc Chromate and then sprayed it with a white automotive paint. I was in love with the Boston Whaler Super Cat at the time, so I added some red and blue stripes ala' SC. While visiting the Great Lakes Manufacturing Co. for some parts for the rudder system, I also got some cool Sizzler decals and placed them on the stern. It looked sick! (I worked in Solon, OH at the time, so Cleveland was a mere 20 minutes or so away) Yeah, back then working well before the age of 18 was pretty common. Had to make money for a car, boat, and school ya know!
The next time I was able to take it sailing was the next Spring.... my senior HS year's 'Hooky Day.' A next-door friend alerted me that we all weren't going to school that day, so I suggested that a trio of us go sailing. Him, a girlfriend and I put that boat back together as fast as we could and took off for Mosquito Lake. We had an awesome day of sailing and adventure! A far, far better hooky-day than any other senior had. After my friend told most of our compatriots that we sailed the day away, many were a little miffed that we didn't call them, too.
Somewhere I have a Poleroid picture of the Sizzler in the back yard with the mast up, sails bent on, and skinny-me posing in front of it with my Grandpa. To me it looked almost like a Super Cat! And almost as much fun!
I ended up selling the boat for $2000 for money for college.
Somewhere I have a Poleroid picture of the Sizzler in the back yard with the mast up, sails bent on, and skinny-me posing in front of it with my Grandpa.
Great story, would love to see that picture if you can find and scan it.
After hours of searching for these photos, I see that they don't show the sails bent on... unless there was another photo somewhere that I haven't found yet.
So here's the old pix of my ol' Sizzler. July 1981.
That's me at 17 yrs, and my Grandfather at 85 yrs.
 If you look very closely, you can just make out the tiller. It's actually in the form of a shallow 'V' of an included angle of roughly 150 degrees, with it's apex bolted to the rudder cross-bar in the typical swiveling fashion. Both sides of the 'V' have telescoping extensions. Yes, as you can guess it was way too easy to tack the boat without swinging a typical single extension bar back around the main sheet tackle as are most beach cats. It helped keep the helmsman's weight further forward and tacking was pretty effortless.
Yes, the helmsman had to remember to retract the weather tiller bar telescoping extension before moving to the lee side during the tack/jibe in spicy weather, but it was a novel idea to help keep the boat better balanced.
I had rigged up some stabilizing lines for mast-raising to the front corners of the tramp frame. Made raising the mast a one-kid affair.
Right. It doesn't really look like a SC, now does it? Maybe...unless you squint real hard. 🤣Â
Thank you for sharing those, Cat Scratch - great to see! The Sizzler seems to be a pretty unique boat. I have been working on a project tracing the sailboats from Jaws 2 and would really like to fill in the gaps in the screen-used Sizzler's history between 1980-1990, and a few years after that. I know she had a few owners in that time, and I guess could still be out there somewhere. Beast could fill in a lot of gaps if he returns! 🙂Â
This Sizzler (in these pix) appears to have foam-pour ports on the upper inside rims of the hulls. Mine did not have those, not that I remember anyway. Gotta wonder if this Sizzler also is overweight by water intrusion into the foam? My Sizzler had flimsy rubber gaskets surrounding the aluminum tramp pylons that were supposed to keep water out of the hulls. If memory serves, the vertical pylons were U-section aluminum channels, so there was plenty of opportunities for water to ingress, no matter the quality of the gaskets. The photos here appear to show rectangular-sectioned aluminum pylons.
Before selling my Sizzler, I was pondering upon opening the hulls (removing the one-piece SS perimeter U-strip and rivets) and removing all the foam, then making support bulkheads for the trampoline pylons, etc. All that modification might have made the boat a real sizzler in the water. But, other things came around and higher-education was looming.
In these photos, you can again see the novel V-shaped tiller bar with telescopic extensions on each side.
Looks like the boat is sporting a set of Prindle 18 sails.
https://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/93327
Hope he finds out what ever happened to the jaws Sizzler.
The movie clip sure had a lot of fixed up cats with paint and colored sails. I saw one of the old Tornados had the original wheel on the boom for the outhaul.
The Sizzler was the original symmetrical deep V design boardless cat, and look at those bows with v on top. Pretty cool boats
 I saw one of the old Tornados had the original wheel on the boom for the outhaul.
Yeah, my old Z-Cat 16 (she died while sailing in very rough weather on L. Erie 1994) had a wheel on the end of the boom for the outhaul. I still have that boom! It was like a geared purchase, with a cleated outhaul line to the larger diameter of the wheel, and with a wire rope outhaul to the clew of the main tensioned by a smaller-diameter wheel that was on the same plastic molding as the large wheel, both wheels stacked like a small wedding cake.
The Sizzler was the original symmetrical deep V design boardless cat, and look at those bows with v on top. Pretty cool boats
Yup, my old Sizzler (sold in 1982) would slice through the waves like a wave-piercer. Probably the first type of the so-called wave piercing hulls. But they were all very heavy after the hygroscopic foam inside the hulls became water-logged. Though, still a fun boat for a 16 yr old when I purchased her in 1979.
I think the SuperCats had that beat by a few years.
But this is a cool story/quest - hope it leads somewhere. I never bothered to watch Jaws 2, but now that I know there are cats in there, it's in my queue.
Once I've had a chance to watch it, I should be able to comment on the big boom wheel. Sounds like the IYE outhaul I had on my Zygal Tornado.