Reel - I think you're right. Hunt probably encouraged a budding 18 year old engineer to patent one of his designs, so that he could protect the rights for Alim to use them on the steplift ????
The strakes were a HUNT design. The drawings that appeared in boating magazine clearly show strakes. The strakes appear on the 1958 prototype boat. The strakes appear on Moppie in the 1960 Miami to Nassau race. (even moppie was built before the patent was filed). I imagine that strakes were part of Hunts v20 design too . . . but who the heck knows.
We do know that Hunt could not patent them b/c of some stipulation in the law . . . otherwise Hunt would have patented the Deep V.
Anyway I look at it . . . I still see Harry Schoell as a fraudulent self promoter . . . he is taking credit for a design that was never his. He just happens to have the patent for it . . cause his dad owned Alim and worked with Ray Hunt.
There's a lot more to this story . . . than we're hearing from Schoell.