Maximus

"Using hand signals, Don and I agreed that we would finish together, with me slightly in front. Right at the finish line, Peter noticed that Aronow had been slowly reducing RPM steadily. We were running nose to nose, and at the last instant, Don slammed the throttles and so did we. We out-dragged him and won by 9 feet!"

The courses, Org's and faces may have changed but the shenanigans never will.

That must have been an exciting feeling pulling BBD/Aronow to take the win.

Happy bday

Marc
Driver, AMF Turbine Offshore
#26 Platinum Princess

Edward R. Cozzi

Happy Birthday Brownie! Sorry it's a day late.

When I die I want to come back as YOU............but better looking!

Ed Cozzi

thedonz

Top Banana

Sorry Brownie, thanks for the correction......do you have any idea rough or other wise how many races you won?

BROWNIE

Geez, Charlie. The first few years we only had one race a year, and I had to race against Sam Griffith. Overall wins, 11.

Top Banana

That's very good. 11 wins puts you ahead of Michael Doxford. This gives you an 11th overall ranking of all drivers, all time.

I guess that is why you could wear the hat with both BATMAN & ROBIN on it.

BROWNIE

Not really, Charlie. If you count like that, Bobby Moore has a gazillion wins.

Top Banana

Your right....as usual.

What of all the races, wins or not was your most memorable?

BROWNIE

We had a bunch of interesting races. One of my most memorable was the 1966 Miami-Nassau race. I had a 28' Donzi with a pair of 427 (Chevy) Turbocharged Daytonas on Casale V-drives, driving inboard standard shafts and props.. My co-pilot was Sam Sarra, chief engineer of Daytona. If you looked up 'crazy brilliant sonova*****' in the dictionary, his picture would be there. He had discovered that if you opened the scroll on the turbocharger, backpressure went down, horsepower went waaaay up, and getting on plane became a real chore. I made up a rig that consisted of a couple of ten pound CO2 extinguishers, upside down, with tubes squirting CO2 into the down side of the props. This ventilated the props, and let them spin like crazy, then get a solid bite. We only had enough CO2 for a couple of takeoffs.

We idled out the start of the race (about 45 open class boats) including the entire Mercury racing team, It was rougher than a *****. 5' head seas at the start and much bigger in the stream. We surprised everyone at the start, and held the lead for a while. When we neared Cat Cay, which required some maneuvering to get in the Gun Cay pass, I discovered that I couldn't turn the steering wheel or pull back the wide-open throttles. The exhaust risers had broken, and welded the steering and the throttle controls SOLID! To get through the cut, I shut off one motor, then the other to steer the boat. Sam climbed in the engine space (he threw the engine hatches overboard) and unhooked the throttles and tied lines to them from the cockpit . He tied the risers more-or-less back in place, and we headed to the Cat Cat harbor, where all the boats had to go to receive their customs papers, which were tied to a rock. If you got close enough tto the dock, they threw it into the boat. There must have been thirty boats in that tiny harbor when we came in, still steering by turning off and on the engines. What a mess. We hit about 15 boats 'low speed' and got out into clear water. with only 130 miles to go. I was about to witness a guy who never gives up.....

The steering was Morse 'rack & pinion' with cables down both sides of the boat, and behind the engines. It was a one-piece double cable, so that if one side stuck, the whole thing stuck. Sam got his Snap-on screwdriver and a 5 pound sledgehammer, and cut the tempered 1" diameter steering cable. He said "We gotta hurry, because the front gas tank is leaking, and we will run out of gas". Huh? I held the steering cable on the jackshaft, between the engine and the V-drive and Sam cut it using the screwdriver like a chisel. As he slammed it, little blue sparks would arc over into the little pool of 115-145 Avgas, and go out. We both got terribly seasick, but we did it. We fired that mother up and finished 13th.

damdonzi

Holy Hell.