Bahama's 500

[Top Banana]

Originally Posted by BROWNIE

In the first '500', I drove George Couzens' 28' Donzi, "Blue Devil". We stayed with the leader, Richard Bertram and Jim Mander in "My Moppie" for the first 40 miles. Our handling got worse and worse. Finally, when we would stand it up, both engines would start missing like crazy. My riding mechanic, Mark "Big Dirty" Raymond, looked through the engine room hatch, and turned white! The bilge was a foot deep in purple 115/145 avgas! The harmonic balancers on the Holman Moody engines were throwing gasoline on the distributors. The mixture was so rich that it could not ignite. What to do? Big Dirty was a fireman in real life. He knew what to do. He taped up the air inlets to keep the mixture rich, and we turned back to Lucaya, giving a wide berth to the 3 boats that were burning on the way back. It was the longest 40 miles of my life! When we reached Lucaya, I had the crew jump overboard, and I aimed it for the Travellift. I crawled onto the front deck, and when I was sure that the boat would coast into the lift, I fired both CO2 extinguishers, killing the engines. I stepped off when the boat touched the dock, and kissed the ground. The lift operator wouldn't haul the boat because of the fumes cascading over the sides. It sat for a week before anyone would touch it.

Here is the Blue Devil that Brownie mentions in his story and that is Brownie and Big Dirty on the left....the girl...oh yeah, she was the Playmate of the Year in 1967.

More photos on www.historicraceboats.com

[seeroy]

Now that's the Brownie I remember. If you look very closely, you will notice that his eyes are NOT looking at the camera and neither are Mark's.

[cougarman]

Nice Post............Thanks for sharing




Jon

[seeroy]

If the Sonny Levi/Formula picture was in color it would be white with red trim. I remember hearing $100,000. In 1967, that was alot of money to lose in it's first outing.

[seeroy]

2nd Bahama 500 Fuel stop in Nassau..Left Picture, Help me here. Is that Peter Rittmaster? Also Fred Kiekhaefer in glasses.
Right picture is Odell Lewis "sticking" fuel while Charlie (Dammit, I can't remember last name) delivering fuel.

[gofish 7070]

Absolutely priceless stuff here,,,,,,,,,,,, Did do a little work with Sam Sara back in FDL,,,, For a while their all of offshore engines had their electrical components in a rather large cast box located on the back of the engine,,,,,,,,,,, referred to as Sams Suitcase,,,,,,,,,,,, He was very innovative with the hard mounts system just basically attached to hard angle aluminum mounts between the stringers,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,always had hard time aligning this stuff up,,,,,,,,, but it seemed to work all right,,,,,,,,, Am not sure But I think Sam was involved in a offshor boat named Holocaust before he came to Merc?????? Well respected engineer who was very important in the development of Thunderbolt ignition systems,,,,,,,,,

[seeroy]

Once again 2nd 500 Nassau fuel stop. Left picture...Brother Bill Sirois pulling toward fuel dock as Odell and Mel Riggs leave. Right picture..Wayne Vickers fuels his boat while Jim Emerson prepares to fuel other tank. Most of our Outboard 3 and 4 engine boats had 3 tanks. Usually 100 gallons each. Notice at the left rear corner...two fuel pickups into lines that run under the canvas. While I don't remember Wayne's boat exactly..usually each tank had 2 independent fuel pickups in the rear cap (lowest point) that fed a fuel filter which would have been mounted on the inside of the motor well bulkhead. Each of three filters fed an individual engine. We had alot of redundency built into the fuel systems, but that didn't deter "Murphy's Law". The 32' Cary that I ran in 3rd 500 had bottom fed crossfeed lines that gravity-fed from the two outer (and higher) tanks into the center tank which then fed the fuel filters. This setup is what led me to get a short fuel load that day. We fueled the outer tanks first and, when we "stuck" them, they showed full. Then we fueled the center tank without thinking about the fact that, concurrently, the outer tanks were crossfeeding into the center tank and draining themselves. When the center tank showed full, we hauled ass. I might have gotten that sequence wrong, but you get the drift. -Steve

[seeroy]

Welllll! There's Jim Hauser himself. Welcome aboard. I think I've got my Mojo working a little again and some stories are starting to flow. But, more importantly, so are other people's.

[BROWNIE]

The picture above of 'Blue Devil' was taken by a plane while we were trying to figure out why we were jumping so high (ass end full of avgas). Note the ho-hum look on Big Dirty's face.

[seeroy]

End of 2nd 500. Left picture...Odell Lewis approaches dock with Bill Sirois 4 seconds behind. Center picture...The man that made it all possible...In shorts no less...or did he just roll his pants up. Right picture...Mr K tells Odell, Good job, but would you PLEASE put your shoes back on!".