Boats since the beginning of time have been built to float, or at least that’s the object, but Universal Studios (which of late does the unusual) has built a boat to sink. It sounds a bit odd, and frankly it looks a bit odd.

The filming of the movie Jaws began that morning on South Beach, and suddenly the parking lot at the end of Katama Road looked like lower Fifth avenue — trucks galore, even a bus. Some had been rented, but others belonging to Universal Studios had traveled the 3,000 miles from Pacific to Atlantic.

At Katama, shooting started yesterday on Jaws. Around the Universal Studios offices the day before, one wouldn’t have believed it was going to happen.

For a nerve-tattering 24 hours this week, Universal Studios’ production on Martha’s Vineyard of the smash-to-be film Jaws was a suspense story that no audience will ever see.

The $3 1/2-million project had run afoul of the law — the production crew had not gotten permission to do a batch of things it was doing.

And permission-getting, which involves formal public notice (see legal advertisements, Page Two), hearings, and mature deliberation, can be agonizingly long. Production costs are budgeted at $30,000 a day.