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feature 30 Houseboatmagazine.com Gift Of Retirement When Kent's grandfather retired in 1992, he and his wife Mae Etta purchased their second houseboat to get their life after work started right. Their first houseboat was built at the Hines, Inc. company shop in Bowling Green, Ky. in 1956 and it was a 50-foot steel hull boat. The couple has had a boat on Old Hick- ory Lake in Tennessee since the early 1970s and for their second boat they went to Jim Hadley and Mitchell Higginbotham who at the time were working for Jamestowner Houseboats. Four years into his tenure as president of HFL, Kent decided to partner up with his grandfather on a new houseboat and they again wanted to work with the team they were comfortable with. After researching other houseboat builders in the area, they went with Majestic Yachts to build their boat, which is the company that is now run by Hadley. "Jim [Hadley], Mitchell [Higginbotham] and Bill [Padgett] were willing to build us a boat with full inboard engines (Vee drives), not just the I/O models like some of the other manu- facturers build," remembers Kent. "An I/O is good for putting around, but in our business we don't like them because anytime you have a significant problem with the lower units you have to pull the boat out of the water to fix it. We carry spare shafts, rudders and wheels so all we need is a diver." Creating A Dream Working closely with Hadley, Higginbotham and Padgett at Majestic, the grandfather and grandson team went with an aluminum hulled 85- by 19-foot model and named it the HF ONE. With their combined experiences they were able to design a boat that would be ideal for their needs, including a four- coat bottom paint system by International Paint that is called Intersleek 900. This coating is used on large tankers and cruise ships for anti fouling and helps reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency. International Paint also supplied the Epoxy on the hull sides. The actual hull is made of half-inch reinforced alumi- num in the bow and quarter-inch thick aluminum on the rest of the hull. "The people at Majestic are honest, fair people who do things right the first time. Anybody that has the same mentality would have fun building a boat with them." Kent Furlong, co-owner of HF ONE Splashed! Kent Furlong is the president and founder of Hines Furlong Line, Inc. and he currently owns several tank barges. The larger 30,000 bbl capacity tank barges hold approximately 1.2 million gallons of liquid cargo. But the highlight is seeing one launched on a controlled slide into the water.