I took these in St Pete in late 68 or 69..I was running with Bertram, but don't remember who made this..

Thanks,

Butch

That Thing Is Cool! What Is It Brownie?

Hi Butch: nice to have another person on board with some history. I`ll answer for Brownie. That was actually a wood hull Formula, we built it as a prototype at Lake X, John Steinbeck raced it in the Miami Naussau race, I think 1967 or 8. I ran as far as Cat Cay in a 28` Memco with him, at that point both boats started comming apart, John blew the tunnel out and I delamenated the entire bottom of mine and we were both taking on water, as usual it was rough. We were trapped in Bimini for almost a week waiting for repairs, we actually hauled both boats out of the water there, on greased boards and a pick up truck pulling us. I`m not sure what ever happened to the boat after that, I think the bone yard. Those were the days, Keep the pix. comming, My boat was # 101 named Spirit, ever wonder where Smitty got the name for Hal Sahlman`s 35` Cig.
Hope you are well. Your friend Richie Powers 7XCHAMP

Thanks for the reply Richie..My slide was dated Feb 69, but I wasn't one who got things developed right away..all I remember was it was St Pete, and we broke the My Moppie the same way it always broke..the rear engine sat so low to the bottom of the Vee, and the crank pulley was at the lowest point in the stern, any water in the hull would travel up the blower belt to the distributor, which was front (of the engine) mounted off the cam between the path of the belt..we tried everything we could come up with to fix it, but that is what put the Holman Moody blower engines out of almost every race..
Haven't seen you in years, but we may cross paths soon..
regards
Butch Stokes

Jeez, Richie, thanks for saving me on that one! I don't remember that one at all (and a lot of other things.....) Li'l Abner, please get me Pat Eves' phone #

Thanks,

AB

Wow! I think that is the boat that Ralph Seavey and I worked on with Ted Jones at Mabry Edwards shop in Jacksonville. We actually cut a fiberglass Vee bottom in half longitudinally and rebuilt it as a tunnel boat and then took it back to Lake X. As a side note we designed a unique trim system. We fastened the transom tie down bars to a single aluminum bar assembly and attached the assembly to two trim rams. This allowed trimming all three engines simultaneously and kept them all even. Jim Emerson did his usual fantastic heliarc welding job. Unfortunately, the assembly came apart during testing at the Lake and was abandoned. By the way, I think the Miami-Nassau race that Richie is referring to is the one in which I ran a 3 engine 28' Bertram (#909) and popped a motor nearing Nassau. I will try to attach photo but I don't know if I have that priviledge on this site - Steve Sirois

OK. Now I can post pics. I think the boat next to mine in the first pic is Gene Wagner's 28' Seacraft "Milkshake" - Steve

Steve.....it was a pleasure spending some time with you and having lunch on Monday in JAX. It's nice to know that we still have some old guys ( like us ) who really value the history of the sport.

Your additions here and on the HORBA site are very welcome and add a lot to the missing pieces. Thanks so much.

Charlie McCarthy
www.historicraceboats.com

Hi Steve: Welcome aboard. You are right about the cat. It was the one you guys worked on at Mabry`s place. Somehow I thought the old man called it a Formula, as at the time we were doing the 29` Formulas. Remember Genth had the old man build two 29`s. One single 427 and the other 29` triple 1250,s Joan E we ran them both in the round Long Island race, Genth won, Wagner and I finished I think first or second in our class.
Back to the wood cat. It did run that race I referred to Stenbeck and Jerry Howard were in the boat, and now with your input I am sure it was a Memco. If memory serves me right Ray Dowling was your Co-driver????? and remeber Stan Adrian was Genth`s co driver.
Milk shake was a 21` Seacraft with twins. The boat next to yours is a 25` Seacraft, either mine, Wagners, or Moesley`s boat which all reverted back to being my boats anyway, Janisch was my Co-driver, guess we were blessed.
Hope you are well, good to hear from you again. This is the site you really belong to, more about the Offshore good old days. I saw Brownie yesterday over at Stainless Marine, always nice to say hello, he is doing well and looking good, somethings never change. I just read one of his articles in latest Hot Boat Mag. great stuff from one of the real guys.
Later: Richie 7XCHAMP

Hi Richie - That cat very well may have been a Formula hull to begin with. When Ralph and I got there it was just a blank hull sitting in the MEMCO shop. Also, I think Mr K provided Mabry with a mold that had been acquired from Aronow. The mold was in the shop and I believe it was used to produce all of the MEMCO hulls that we ran. Interestingly, one of the original wooden Switzer Wing boats was also in that shop. The thing that really blew me away was that we were actually working with the legendary Ted Jones. He recounted alot of good stories to us. Indeed Ray Dowling did ride with me in the attached MEMCO pictures. This was the 1968 Gateway Marathon from West Palm Beach to Freeport and back. Monster water in the Gulfstream that day! As you will remember Ray was rather round and I was skinny, therefore I felt comfortable that if we ended up in the water, the sharks would eat him first and leave me alone . As you can tell by the pics we did alot of "flying" that day. Those were the days of real Offshore and you will notice in the second picture that my right hand is on the steering wheel and MY left hand is on the throttles. Mabry took these pics from light airplane and afterwards told me I should have used more afterplane and put water in the nose ballast tank. Wellllll...a couple days prior Wayne Vickers had tripped and stuffed an identical setup and literally broken the nose off of the boat while practicing with afterplanes and ballast...soooo...I was not about to do the same thing in those monster seas. There were times while quartering in the troughs that I was looking up at breaking crests that I estimated at 15'!!! Actually, I think I did pretty well as I finished 2nd outboard close behind John Stenbeck and (I think) 3rd or 4th overall. I do remember being amazed to see the smoke stacks near the Fort Worth Inlet arise from the water dead ahead after ziz-zagging through the closely spaced chasms in the Stream. The blue Gateway patch in the picture is from 1966. That's the one were I rode with Gene Berg and he lost a bunch of teeth and fractured a kneecap. That's a good story that I posted over on Scream and Fly. Maybe I should copy and post some of those stories from there to here....WOW! those old days were fun for all of us. I went on to do other things that were also fun and exciting, but I have always looked back on the "Kiekhafer Navy" days as an amazing era. Sometimes I think back and say to myself. "WOW! Did I actually DO that?" The answer is always....YES!