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MY Mighty Mites We all have our own various reasons for liking a particular motor, and I have a love / hate relationship with Neptune Mighty Mites that I will try and relate. After I left home for college I went several years without a boat of my own. During my junior year, I scraped enough money together to buy an old twelve foot Nipper class wood sailboat. At the end of the school year I managed to land an internship at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. I wasn't exactly sure where Solomons was, I figured that the Chesapeake Bay had to be better sailing than Lake Lansing (average depth two feet) so I dragged the boat along. Since the Bay looked pretty big on the map, I decided to buy a motor in case the wind died away from shore. Since the part- time jobs that were paying my way through school did not leave me with much spare money, I looked for the most inexpensive one possible. I ended up buying a used gold Neptune Mighty Mite for $40.00 and building a motor bracket for the boat. Obviously, I got ripped off on the motor, as this quite a few years ago! I tuned up the motor and was soon on my way to Maryland. Little did I know what adventures were awaiting me as I roared down the Pennsylvania Turnpike with my '62 Plymouth Valiant, boat and Mighty Mite. Like many eggbeater types, my Neptune ran wonderfully in the test tank with the prop off. It would fire up on the first or second pull and purr like a kitten. On the boat, however, a lot of words were exchanged. Probably had weak compression. Back in those days, Solomons was a very different place than today. It was rural, and drinking establishments only required that you be old enough to reach the bar. Although I was nowhere near 21, I spent most of the summer drinking Jack Daniels, chasing women, and sailing the boat. The usual drill was to close the bar after midnight, launch the boat, and offer a ride to female types. One night I sank the boat at the ramp with a girl sitting in it. Helps to put the plug in. Fortunately, there was usually a good breeze and I never needed the motor, as I went back and forth across the Bay in the state of alcohol and hormonally induced bliss. Soon, my youthful lack of common sense (still a problem today), and lack of experience with the Bay, caused me to get more adventuresome. I thought it would be fun to sail the boat from Solomons to Norfolk and back one weekend. Not advisable in a twelve foot boat. After nearly being run over by a ship the previous night (we did not need running lights in Michigan so why use them here I thought), I made it to Mobjack Bay before turning back. Between the Potomac and Patuxent River I had my first experience with the violent summer squalls that the Chesapeake is known for. As the clouds darkened I realized that this was probably a bad sign, as I was familiar with midwestern tornadoes, and this had the same look about it. I headed for shore but did not make it before the storm hit. I quickly dropped the sail and pulled on the trusty Mighty Mite. Several more pulls without a pop resulted in the motor being removed from the bracket and launched with a burst of profanity. It hit the mast and landed in the bottom of the boat. I tossed out and anchor and rode out the squall. When the storm with 60 - 70 knot winds hit there were two other boats in sight. Afterwards, those two other boats were nowhere to be seen. At that point I could only sit there, as the cotton sail could not be used until it dried, and the motor refused to start. Soon a Navy AVR (aviation rescue) appeared and threw me a line, and I went aboard. As they towed me into the Navy base, I was asked if I was so and so, who had been reported missing in the storm. After discovering that I was not who they were looking for, I was dropped off at the base, and they went back out. Later, I was told the other boat was never found, and that the second boat that been nearby, was found driven ashore. This was long before the bridge was built to connect Solomons to St. Mary's County, so the Navy let me sleep in a boiler room while my sail dried. There is more to this story concerning my night on the Navy base, but I really should not put it in print. Now that I was and "experienced" Chesapeake Bay sailor, I decided to sail across the Bay and down to Smith Island a few weeks later. Another guy wanted to come along, so we left on a windy Friday night after work. After sailing all the way across the Bay, even I was questioning this one. We decided to pull up on this deserted island and spend the night. In the morning, I noticed this tower behind us and after checking the chart, realized that we were squat in the middle of the prohibited Naval aircraft live fire range that they had on Bloodsworth and Pone Islands back then. Since we knew that the bombing began at 0900, we quickly launched the boat. Unfortunately, the sail halyard jammed and we had to come about in the surf to get back to the beach. That maneuver did not go well, and we swamped the boat when two waves came over the stem. Scared out of our minds, we managed to somehow get the boat up on the beach, bailed, fixed the halyard and got out of there just before the planes arrived to bomb. Later, we pulled in Ewell on Smith Island just at dark, and a drenching all night rain began. Two strange teenagers sitting in an open boat during a pouring rainstorm attracted attention, and soon a guy came up and inquired "where you boys from?" We replied Solomons, and after a few moments of contemplation he replied in Smith Island drawl. "Boy, I never saw anyone come so far in something so small, and still be alive". He took pity and let us spend the night in his workboat cabin, but we told him that we had to head back so not to be late for work on Monday. Needless to say, Mighty Mite refused to run, so the guy towed us into the Bay, and wished us luck. We set sail and headed back to Solomons. By this time we had been reported missing to the Coast Guard, which sent up a search and rescue helicopter. The Chesapeake Biological Lab hired a plane and also started looking. They found some pieces of red wood (my boat was red), and concluded that we had been run over by a ship and were not coming back. We did not arrive in Solomons until Monday afternoon as the wind died back and of course the Mighty Mite would not even sputter. Somehow we had eluded all the search aircraft, and found ourselves in a lot of trouble when we got out of the boat. We were forced to write a letter of apology to the Coast Guard for being idiots. Another letter was sent to my parents, stating that the lab was not responsible for anything I did, and that I would be fired if my boat were ever seen in the Bay again. Soon, with the blessing of the la, and their emphatic encouragement to never return to Solomons, I headed back to Michigan. The boat and motor were sold to help pay for my last semester of school, and I spent the next few years on an all expense paid trip to Southeast Asia, and then going to graduate school with the GI Bill. I then applied for a job back at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons as a joke, and somehow suckered them into hiring me. It had been six years since the boating and a few other incidents, (something about stealing all the toilet seats in the women's dorm), but they had not forgotten. They made me swear that I had gotten rid of the boat. I blamed everything on the Mighty Mite and swore that I would not have another one. Later on though, as I started collecting outboards, I found that for some morbid reason I was drawn to Mighty Mites, and wanted to get one running. I slowly bought a few at meets, but all had major problems, so I kept picking them up, figuring that I would eventually have enough parts. One day I was at a meet at Austin Magills. Is was one of those days that did not go well, as I had the fishing motor derby won until I nailed a crab pot, which put me out of the derby. I am sure that this and subsequent crab pot incidents was a result of the fact that I had bought another Mighty Mite from Dennis Sadler, just before the race. When I got home, I repaired the damage to my Wizard caused by the crab pot, and then took two Mighty Mites apart. When going into old motors, I never cease to be amazed at some of the skilled, creative, repairs that have been done by the individuals who probably did not have the money to purchase parts or a new motor. Art DeKalb, for example, has a motor that was built in the depression from numerous motors from different manufacturers, and has many custom machined parts to make it go. It even has a custom rope sheave which has "Hudson River Special" cast into it. I am also amazed at some of the unbelievable abuses that have been some to outboards. The Mighty Mite that I bought at Austin's meet is an outstanding example of the latter category. I was aware of the bad gas tank, and broken cowl (probably from being thrown at a high velocity), when I bought it. The tiller handle looked like someone had tried to tie it into a knot. As I started taking it apart I began to laugh. The motor had zero compression and no spark. The coil was bad (no surprise), but someone had used Bondo to repair a hole in the water jacket. Unfortunately, they had used so much that the jacket was plugged solid with Bondo and prevented water circulation, with predictable results. I then took the carb off. The float chamber was solid with what resembled concrete, and all jets, butterflies, etc. were seized. Tossing that aside, I dug deeper, and discovered a fish scale on the reed assembly. NO, I do not have a good theory as to how it got there, but I suspect that is was violently. I pulled the power head off and found that the piston had a hole the size of a dime in it, which represents a significant amount in a Mighty Mite. Moving south, I discovered major cross threading in the lower unit. The drive shaft was worn, all bushings and seals were bad, and the bevel gears had major play. It appeared that the only tool the previous owners had was a pair of vise grips, as most fasteners were tom up. At this point, I concluded that this might not have been one of my better buys, and started scraping the whole thing into the trash can. I then got this strange feeling that the soul of that motor was pleading with me. "Please, after all the abuse that I have endured, please do not let me die". So I pulled everything out and tossed it under the bench. Later I cleaned everything, and concluded that the gear case, tower, transom clamp, flywheel, crankshaft, stator plate, and carb body could be reused. Maybe I will try and revive this one, and let it live on. I now have six Neptune 1.5 and 1.7 hp models. Maybe I will get going someday, but probably need to buy another half-dozen. Thirty- five years later maybe I will actually get. one to run on the Chesapeake Bay. My first one on the twelve-foot sailboat certainly never did.
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