Bobby Nacho’s Outboard Originals
posted by
Before Small Craft Sales was even a real thing, just a half-baked idea floating around my brain—I asked my friend Bobby Nachos (yes, that’s really what he goes by, and no, we’re not taking questions at this time) to help create some line drawings of different small boats. He agreed, naturally, because he’s one of those annoyingly talented humans who can apparently do everything well. Bobby and his equally talented, creative wife Rhea (who’s helped us out on some design stuff) had just wrapped up selling the iconic Bob Mitchell’s Fly Shop in St. Paul which they ran for the previous 13 years—because apparently they needed more free time to be disgustingly good at art, music, pottery, and everything else.
Those line drawings became part of our early branding—stickers, banners, you name it. But somewhere along the way, Bobby casually showed me a handful of tiny watercolor paintings he’d done of old aluminum outboards he found on Facebook Marketplace. All of them were used. All of them were from Minnesota. All of them were so charmingly quirky that I fell in love instantly.
I asked if there were more.
“Oh yeah, I made like a dozen while trying to learn watercolor,” he said.
Of course he did. This is a guy who’s a killer photographer, throws pottery, and produces slamming techno tracks. Being good at watercolor just felt like overkill at that point. Did I mention that he also holds the world record Musky caught on a fly rod?
Naturally, I begged him to sell me every single one of the outboard paintings. He agreed, and they now hang together in a giant frame in my kitchen, my own personal gallery of Minnesota marketplace glory. But before handing over my cash, I had them all scanned because I knew other boat nerds would appreciate them as much as I do.
And so, I present to you: The Outboard Originals by Robert Hawkins (that’s his real, government-issued name).
We’ll be rolling these out—one at a time—over the next few months. If you recognize any of the boats, or, better yet, actually bought one of them… please reach out. We want the stories and maybe even a photo of where these outboards ended up.
In the meantime, enjoy the boats. And enjoy Bobby’s wonderfully weird, wonderfully talented brain.