Top Banana

If you look at the extended bow section of the Top Banana design, you can see that the body of the boat was equal in size to a Cigarette Mistress, even though that boat was a "35"

Don Aronow used to say that the best design he ever did was the "35". He said that boat had all the best qualities needed to run fast in the ocean safely...... up to 100MPH. And in real open ocean racing that is all the speed you would need.

Of course let's start with the facts. The "35" actually measured 35 feet and 9 inches.....when the pressure to build bigger boats came along, Don only extended it to 37 feet and 6 inches to try not to change it too much.

It was called just that ...the 37.6 Cigarette..later changed to Top Gun.

He said the 35 had the perfect amount of rocker combined with the areodynamics of a deck that actually lifted the boat up into the air...see bigger boats get too heavy to be able to do that.

But in a world of mine is bigger than yours, everybody wanted a boat that was at least a 38 footer. Joel Halpern had won two national championships with Beep Beep which was the forerunner of Top Banana, and Beep Beep was a 38 footer. So Don stretched the 35, much to his chagrin, and the world of bigger boats was launched and continues today.

Sonic30ss

Thanks for all this info, it's great to have first person account of how our hobby(passion) got it's start..... I wish you the best of luck with the new Top Bannana...if your building in RI I'd love to come by to have a look

Love Machine

My only complaint about the what Sonic did with the 35 was the weight wasn't distributed properly. It was back heavy. On take off the bow comes way out of the water until you got up on plane. You also needed to use a lot of down trim to keep the bow stable.

I"ve never riden in the newer Sonic 358 which uses the vacuum bag technique. I would imagine the weight is better distributed.

Charlie, when you laid up your 35 hull how did you distibute weight?

dyno

Love the history, great reading.

Top Banana

Thank you....no, we are building everything in Florida.

In a couple of months we may be set up for visitors, but right now we are working on making the plugs and the molds perfect....it is something we will live with from now on, so it is worth the extra time and expense.

Top Banana

My philosophy with boats is to make them very simple, a reflection of the function they are designed for.

These boats came right from the world of racing and they were not really designed to be loaded up with a lot of heavy options that have nothing to do with performance in the ocean at speed.

Nothing against Sonic, because all the companies now do this. When I built my old boats (personal pleasure boats), I kept them very simple and lightweight....at that time the hot set up was the 38 Scarab with the big big hp KAAMA engines.

My boat was built with twin stock 454's with 370 hp each and TRS drives....In the ocean I could outrun every Scarab I came across...in flat water, on the bay they could pull me but not by much....but the biggest point was the fact that my boat was able to be run EVERY TIME I wanted to use it...I didn't need to bring a mechanic with me.

Sound familiar in the world of giant engines and hp today??

So, as a long answer to your question....your problems may have to do with the placement of the options you may or may not have on board.

Top Banana

I'll be leaving for a couple of weeks vacation...so for you history buffs of the Sonic hull, here is a little something to tide you over.

The government of Puerto Rico sponsored me for the 1980 season. All the Rum manufacturers are represented by the government so the name on the boat was Rums of Puerto Rico...not just one brand like Bacardi etc.

This photo was taken at the Bahamas 200 and it shows what can happen when you celebrate too early...the actual race ran just over 205 miles and this photo was taken after the 200 mile mark as we were closing on the finish line at Freeport after rounding Bimini.

As you can see we were very happy, with a good lead over Ajac Hawk the very first Top Gun from Cigarette....but then one engine dropped rpms and we started looking over our shoulders and ...yes, Jerry Jacoby took his first win and the Top Gun got it's first win also....we came second about 30 seconds later.

This is the same boat as Top Banana, just new livery from the new sponsor. 205 miles across open ocean and Bahama banks...this is what these designs were made for.

Merry Christmas everyone...and a very prosperous New Year to all.

Charlie McCarthy

Chatim Racing

Here's some pics of the 34 on Narragansett Bay RI circa early 1980's....

Chatim Racing

...a couple more

Sonic30ss

SWEEEEEET...nice clean lines, looks like it flys nice and level too