T2x

Hi There:

Pete Aitken was one of the best racers we dealt with.....

I raced with him in his first race in the original Shadow... as a kind of check out cruise in the New Orleans race...in 1981 I believe. After that he raced with Tom Akoury......and was basically unbeatable.

For the record, the first boat didn't actually fall apart, but it did have some delamination in the forward entry sections due to hollow strakes in the early layups....... (your Dad's original boat was actually the 4th hull).....and we replaced it and LOVE-IT (it's inboard sister ship) free of charge (try that today)....... with solid straked versions (no other changes were made)....The first hull was repaired and sold as a pleasure boat. His second boat became the winningest boat of all time in the Pro-stock Class.

Do you guys still have the restaurants?

Best Regards,

T2x

T2x

That would be the 8 yard...model...... Your Virgin Transatlantic Cat was the 12 yard version ..... or was that your hat?

T2x

BROWNIE

Geez. I thought you Joisy guys would appreciate the svelte shape of the Transatlantic. I think our bender was broken the day that we built it.

cosmic12

a few years ago I had a Profile {lets not get into that} but when I was at the factory { factory being a shed in the Iowa corn fields} Randy Shultz said he had the old 30 ft shadow cat molds and all the tooling doe's anybody know if that is true?

Gladhe8er

I thought the molds were sold to either Awesome or American Offshore. The old Chris Cat mold was sold to whoever the Shadow molds were not sold to.

Gladhe8er

Cool. Thanks for the history. I take it you are teh original boat builder? I thought his first race was in late 1980, but I could be wrong. Tommy and my Pops certainly did make a great team.

He sold the boat to Nicky Cutro in 1985 when he got out of racing. It raced under the names "Boardwalk," "E&B Marine," and "Pennzoil" before it was pretty much destroyed at the Key West worlds back in 2002(??) Its a tribute to teh hull that it was a 1982 or 83 boat adn it was hanging with the 32 skaters and 35 motions, and beating many of them with 2.4's vs. the 2.5's that everybody else was running.


My dad does still have the original Black Duck restaurant....28+ years he has been open!

cosmic12

american and awesome both used the old 31 chris cat, the 26 amercian was a pop of the Talon. I know that randy started building a 28 cat not long after he told me about the shadow molds. but hey who knows.

fishead

Sounds good,I thought that the setback would help the water problem and probably give some more leverage to make it fly better.I was aslo thinking of a tunnel tab for the hop.But what is a wedge.
I have not tried cleavers yet.

T2x

I think your dad had a vee bottom performance boat (IMP) prior to the Shadow that he tried to race and damaged badly.......Maybe that was his first race?

Tell your Dad..Rich Luhrs sends his regards........

T2x

T2x

To my knowledge the Shadow molds are still in storage in NJ..... but there were a couple of CHris cat molds that were sold to various people. In addition A few people "popped" the hulls......

T2x