Can`t lay my hands on a pic of the boat,so snapped a still off the TV playing a DVD I have of the 89 Worlds ,just to give an idea.Quality a bit grim I`m afraid.

Yes, there you go, it's pretty boat, the colors???? but the shape was nice, very American looking.

If memory serves me right, they had some type of injection on those merlins to help get on plane, maybe nitrious or something???? Don't know why I recall that, I think it didn't have vent tubes for some reason also? I believe it was a stern drive boat, I recall trying to talk to those guys a little but they were not very talk-a-tive?

Joe Gere

So Guys,
Some of you remember her...
Now the 65 million dollar question, does anyone have any pictures of her?
Thanks
Martin

Ok Martin,I`ve finally twigged your alias.Talk about being thick.I didn`t snap Diesel Dancer as I had so many of the boat before,and never envisaged doing all this historical lark until `Little Nige` kept putting the squeeze on me.Anyway here is another TV pic,albeit crud quality.The commentry on the DVD was, quote ` we`ve studied this boat in the dock,and it`s one of the most sanitary boats racing out there`which makes beating the yanks etc even more satisfying.

Flying fish, thank you once again for posting those old pics. How comes that it is almost always you, BT or Little Nige when it comes to digging up all the really interesting things, no matter if it is European or American? It seems the fans over there hardly took any pics at the races and that it is too exhausting to have a look at their archives and scan some of the old stuff?

Flying Fish,

I assume the one of the most sanitary boats was a knock because Diesel Dancer as I remember her was plain, dirty, the hull was old and looked stress cracked alla round, engine compartment was messy, oilly, etc, etc. So, I guess stark or rough as compared to Yank chrome and spit polish is what they meant?

Joe Gere

there was also a black cat one of that belonged to a aussie named mark lee which had a set of cats in her and if i remember they had 6 turbo's per motor with custom air to air intercoolers and arenson surface drives. i had the pleasure of riding in it during testing and ran 134mph. mark lee was killed in a smaller boat crash and i dont know what ever happend to the boat.

Absolutely Olli,you summed it up in a nutshell.Both `Little Nige` and myself come from the UK hotbed of offshore i.e. the solent ,and the Cowes - Torquay - Cowes is probably one of the best spectator events from the land in the world,better than Key West for open sea photography.Marco with far more diverse boats in Italy has a deep knowledge of offshore,and it amazes me that with all that fanatical ferrari following they have ,only he has emerged as a true follower of what to my mind is greater than F1 motor racing.I think the U.S. have never had true offshore racing that clips the headlands to attract the photographers,and other than the lake racing its done off an open beach some way off.You get the odd race that comes in close but not many.So it`s £600/hr or whatever for the chopper job,and who is going to do that race after race ,unless that`s your sole means of income and you do it professionally. When U.S. photos are put on the site it usually is of non racing shots and one of the few if any is Charlie`s HORBA site,using Magueri via Crouse pics.Anything relatively recent,say from 90`s onwards you never see,presumably because it costs so much to obtain the photo from a chopper.Think how many Needlenose/Freeze Frame pics you`ll never see unless you go on their website and view a small image with copyright on it.It would be nice to think that after a certain time after the event ,these pics would be put on say a HORBA site so we could all create our own raceboat libraries.The Boatmad galleries that myself and `Little Nige` have created courtesy of the Boatmad computer whizzkids,have been specifically put on there for the devotees to copy off as they please.I hope Charlie reads this diatribe and removes the HORBA from the pics so we can create our own libraries of such craft.I even have seen the bizarre situation of my photos appearing on the HORBA site with HORBA stamped across them.It doesn`t bother me except if I wish to have a record of a boat in the HORBA site at present ,no way.H20 is one of the few who put pics on site for us all to share which is really appreciated.So scrap the daft politics that seem to apply to out of date pics, and lets all savour them,were hardly going to copy them off at silly money prices.There we`ve gone from Diesl Dancer to a rant on raceboat pics,but that`s the way it can change tack.

Thanks Graham.... Thought the Alais was an easy one.....

Happy new Year

Got it in one Habana Joe,but us Brits love all that and being the underdog.