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It was an unexpected pleasure to find myself in a boat from that era.
The Superboat's of the 80's were just that, triple engined with the latest in Keith Eickert engines for power and burning Av gas that will burn your eyes out if you are downwind.
This boat was run by Bob Idoni and Bobby Saccenti and of course Kramer, in Atlantic City at a very rough race, where the wave estimates were 10 feet average.
The race was black flagged after it had been run awhile and this boat was declared the overall winner as it had a major lead over the next boat.
The boat was then shipped to the next race in Michigan. Before the next race, Ben was arrested and the government set about seizing his assets. Since Ben never showed up for the Michigan race, the crew decided to bring the boat back to Florida to the shop.
The boat never made it and was grabbed by federal agents in Georgia. It was then held on the govenrment property at Cape Kennedy, the space center, for the next several years.
So the owner of this boat has a race boat that was only raced once, won the race and then was put in a time capsule for a number of years.
I tried to break it free a couple of times, but had no luck.
I asked Bobby Saccenti about it later, and he said the boat just never got out of shape.
When they built it and tested it, they would run out of Haulover....straight out, trying to get it to lift off the break coming in...never happened, it just kept going and was gaining speed as it went.
It is funny that the boats that are not really being made anymore, these two Apache pace boats, ended up leading the modern day racers into the first lap. Truly great ocean busting machines.
A big thank you to the present owner who is maintaining the boat in a pristine condition.
Maybe someone who has the photos of the 47 foot boat on race day, could post here so we could add pics to this thread.
Last edited by Top Banana : 09-10-2007 at 08:58 PM.
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